North and South | Page 9

west wind behind her, as she crossed some heath, she
seemed to be borne onwards, as lightly and easily as the fallen leaf that
was wafted along by the autumnal breeze. But the evenings were rather
difficult to fill up agreeably. Immediately after tea her father withdrew
into his small library, and she and her mother were left alone. Mrs.
Hale had never cared much for books, and had discouraged her
husband, very early in their married life, in his desire of reading aloud
to her, while she worked. At one time they had tried backgammon as a
resource; but as Mr. Hale grew to take an increasing interest in his

school and his parishioners, he found that the interruptions which arose
out of these duties were regarded as hardships by his wife, not to be
accepted as the natural conditions of his profession, but to be regretted
and struggled against by her as they severally arose. So he withdrew,
while the children were yet young, into his library, to spend his
evenings (if he were at home), in reading the speculative and
metaphysical books which were his delight.
When Margaret had been here before, she had brought down with her a
great box of books, recommended by masters or governess, and had
found the summer's day all too short to get through the reading she had
to do before her return to town. Now there were only the well-bound
little-read English Classics, which were weeded out of her father's
library to fill up the small book-shelves in the drawing-room.
Thomson's Seasons, Hayley's Cowper, Middleton's Cicero, were by far
the lightest, newest, and most amusing. The book-shelves did not
afford much resource. Margaret told her mother every particular of her
London life, to all of which Mrs. Hale listened with interest, sometimes
amused and questioning, at others a little inclined to compare her
sister's circumstances of ease and comfort with the narrower means at
Helstone vicarage. On such evenings Margaret was apt to stop talking
rather abruptly, and listen to the drip-drip of the rain upon the leads of
the little bow-window. Once or twice Margaret found herself
mechanically counting the repetition of the monotonous sound, while
she wondered if she might venture to put a question on a subject very
near to her heart, and ask where Frederick was now; what he was doing;
how long it was since they had heard from him. But a consciousness
that her mother's delicate health, and positive dislike to Helstone, all
dated from the time of the mutiny in which Frederick had been
engaged,--the full account of which Margaret had never heard, and
which now seemed doomed to be buried in sad oblivion,--made her
pause and turn away from the subject each time she approached it.
When she was with her mother, her father seemed the best person to
apply to for information; and when with him, she thought that she
could speak more easily to her mother. Probably there was nothing
much to be heard that was new. In one of the letters she had received
before leaving Harley Street, her father had told her that they had heard

from Frederick; he was still at Rio, and very well in health, and sent his
best love to her; which was dry bones, but not the living intelligence
she longed for. Frederick was always spoken of, in the rare times when
his name was mentioned, as 'Poor Frederick.' His room was kept
exactly as he had left it; and was regularly dusted, and put into order by
Dixon, Mrs. Hale's maid, who touched no other part of the household
work, but always remembered the day when she had been engaged by
Lady Beresford as ladies' maid to Sir John's wards, the pretty Miss
Beresfords, the belles of Rutlandshire. Dixon had always considered
Mr. Hale as the blight which had fallen upon her young lady's prospects
in life. If Miss Beresford had not been in such a hurry to marry a poor
country clergyman, there was no knowing what she might not have
become. But Dixon was too loyal to desert her in her affliction and
downfall (alias her married life). She remained with her, and was
devoted to her interests; always considering herself as the good and
protecting fairy, whose duty it was to baffle the malignant giant, Mr.
Hale. Master Frederick had been her favorite and pride; and it was with
a little softening of her dignified look and manner, that she went in
weekly to arrange the chamber as carefully as if he might be coming
home that very evening. Margaret could not help believing that there
had been some late intelligence of Frederick, unknown to her mother,
which was making her father anxious and uneasy. Mrs. Hale did not
seem to