The Farringdons | Page 2

Farringdons, the daughters
and co-heiresses of John Farringdon. John Farringdon and his brother
William had been partners, and had arranged between themselves that
William's only child, George, should marry John's eldest daughter,
Maria, and so consolidate the brothers' fortunes and their interest in the
works. But the gods--and George--saw otherwise. George was a
handsome, weak boy, who objected equally to work and to Methodism;
and as his father cared for nothing beyond those sources of interest, and
had no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye to
eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have
turned out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not
more severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman,
and extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her
excellencies. George would have been fond of almost any woman who
was pretty enough to be loved and not clever enough to be feared; but
his cousin Maria was beyond even his powers of falling in love,
although, to do him justice, these powers were by no means limited.
The end of it was that George offended his father past forgiveness by
running away to Australia rather than marry Maria, and there
disappeared. Years afterward a rumour reached his people that he had
married and died out there, leaving a widow and an only son; but this
rumour had not been verified, as by that time his father and uncle were
dead, and his cousins were reigning in his stead; and it was hardly to be
expected that the proud Miss Farringdon would take much trouble
concerning the woman whom her weak-kneed kinsman had preferred to
herself.

William Farringdon left all his property and his share in the works to
his niece Maria, as some reparation for the insult which his disinherited
son had offered to her; John left his large fortune between his two
daughters, as he never had a son; so Maria and Anne Farringdon lived
at the Willows, and carried on the Osierfield with the help of Richard
Smallwood, who had been the general manager of the collieries and
ironworks belonging to the firm in their father's time, and knew as
much about iron (and most other things) as he did. Maria was a good
woman of business, and she and Richard between them made money as
fast as it had been made in the days of William and John Farringdon.
Anne, on the contrary, was a meek and gentle soul, who had no power
of governing but a perfect genius for obedience, and who was always
engaged on the Herculean task of squaring the sternest dogmas with the
most indulgent practices.
Even in the early days of this history the Miss Farringdons were what is
called "getting on"; but the Willows was, nevertheless, not without a
youthful element in it. Close upon a dozen years ago the two sisters had
adopted the orphaned child of a second cousin, whose young widow
had died in giving birth to a posthumous daughter; and now Elisabeth
Farringdon was the light of the good ladies' eyes, though they would
have considered it harmful to her soul to let her have an inkling of this
fact.
She was not a pretty little girl, which was a source of much sorrow of
heart to her; and she was a distinctly clever little girl, of which she was
utterly unconscious, it being an integral part of Miss Farringdon's
system of education to imbue the young with an overpowering sense of
their own inferiority and unworthiness. During the first decade of her
existence Elisabeth used frequently and earnestly to pray that her hair
might become golden and her eyes brown; but as on this score the
heavens remained as brass, and her hair continued dark brown and her
eyes blue-gray, she changed her tactics, and confined her
heroine-worship to ladies of this particular style of colouring; which
showed that, even at the age of ten, Elisabeth had her full share of
adaptability.

One day, when walking with Miss Farringdon to chapel, Elisabeth
exclaimed, à propos of nothing but her own meditations, "Oh! Cousin
Maria, I do wish I was pretty!"
Most people would have been too much afraid of the lady of the
Willows to express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but
Elisabeth was never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of
the reasons why her severe kinswoman loved her so well.
"That is a vain wish, my child. Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain;
and the Lord looketh on the heart and not on the outward appearance."
"But I wasn't thinking of the Lord," replied Elisabeth: "I was thinking
of other people; and they love you much more if you are pretty than if