When the Rev. Archibald Drummond was nominated to the living of Hadleigh in Sussex, it was at once understood by his family that he had achieved a decided success in life.

Hadleigh until very recently had been a perpetual curacy, and the perpetual curate in charge had lived in the large, shabby house with the green door on the Braidwood Road, as it was called. There had been some talk of a new vicarage, but as yet the first brick had not been laid, the building-committee had fallen out on the question of the site, and nothing had been definitely arranged: there was a good deal of talk, too, about the church restoration, but at the present moment nothing had been done. 92

Mr. Drummond had not been disturbed in his mind by the delay of the building-committee in the matter of the new vicarage, but on the topic of the church restoration he had been heard to say very bitter things,—far too bitter, it was thought, to proceed from the lips of such a new-comer. It is not always wise to be outspoken, and when Mr. Drummond expressed himself a little too frankly on the ugliness of the sacred edifice, which until lately had been a chapel-of-ease, he had caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the mind of his hearers; but when the young vicar, still strongly imbued with the beauties of Oxford architecture, had looked round blankly on the great square pews and galleries, and then at the wooden pulpit, and the Ten Commandments that adorned the east end, he was not quite so sure in his mind that his position was as enviable as that of other men.

Church architecture was his hobby, and, if the truth must be told, he was a little “High” in his views; without attaching himself to the Ultra-Ritualistic party, he was still strongly impregnated with many of their ideas; he preferred Gregorian to Anglican chants, and would have had no objection to incense if his diocesan could have been brought to appreciate it too.

An ornate service was decidedly to his taste. It was, therefore, a severe mortification when he found himself compelled to minister Sunday after Sunday in a building that was ugly enough for a conventicle, and to listen to the florid voices of a mixed choir, instead of the orderly array of men and boys in white surplices to which he had been accustomed. If he had been combative by nature,—one who loved to gird his armor about him and to plunge into every sort of melee,—he would have rejoiced after a fashion at the thought of the work cut out for him, of bringing order and beauty out of this chaos; but he was by nature too impatient. He would have condemned and destroyed instead of trying to renovate.

“Why not build a new church at once?” he said, with a certain youthful intolerance that made people angry. “Never mind the vicarage; the old house will last my time: but a place like this—a rising place—ought to have a church worthy of it. It will be money thrown away to restore this one,” finished the young vicar, looking round him with sorely troubled eyes; and it was this outspoken frankness that had lost him popularity at first.

But, if the new vicar had secret cause for discontent in the Drummond family there was nothing but the sweetness of triumph.

“Archie has never given me a moment’s trouble from his birth,” his proud mother was wont to declare; and it must be owned that the young man had done very fairly for himself.

There had been plenty of anxiety in the Drummond household while Archibald was enjoying his first Oxford term. Things had come to a climax: his father, who was a Leeds manufacturer, 93 had failed most utterly, and to a large amount. The firm of Drummond & Drummond, once known as a most respectable and reliable firm, had come suddenly, but not unexpectedly to the ground; and Archibald Drummond the elder had been compelled to accept a managership in the very firm that, by competition and underselling, had helped to ruin him.

It was a heavy trial to a man of Mr. Drummond’s proud temperament; but he went through with it in a tough, dogged way that excited his wife’s admiration. True, his bread was bitter to him for a long time, and the sweetness of life, as he told himself, was over for him; but he had a large family to maintain, sons and daughters growing up around him, and the youngest was not yet six months old; under such circumstances a man may be induced to put his pride in his pocket.

“Your father has grown quite gray, and has begun to stoop. It makes my heart quite ache to see him sometimes,” Mrs. Drummond wrote to her eldest son; “but he never says a word to any of us. He just goes through with it day after day.”

At that time Archie was her great comfort. He had begun to make his own way early in life, understanding from the first that his parents could do very little for him. He had worked well at school, and had succeeded in obtaining one or two scholarships. When his university life commenced, and the household at Leeds became straitened in their circumstances, he determined not to encumber them with his presence.

He soon became known in his college as a reading-man and a steady worker; he was fortunate, too, in obtaining pupils for the long vacation. By and by he became a fellow and tutor of his college, and before he was eight-and-twenty the living of Hadleigh was offered to him. It was not at all a rich living,—not being worth more than three hundred a year,—and some of his Oxford friends would have dissuaded him from accepting it; but Archibald Drummond was not of their opinion. Oxford did not suit his constitution; he was never well there. Sussex air, and especially the sea-side, would give him just the tone he required. He liked the big old-fashioned house that would be allotted to him. He could take pupils and add to his income in that way; at present he had his fellowship. It was only in the event of his marriage that his income might not be found sufficient. At the present moment he had no matrimonial intentions: there was only one thing on which he was determined, and that was, that Grace must live with him and keep his house.

Grace was the sister next to him in age. Mattie,—or Matilda, as her mother often called her,—was the eldest of the family, and was two years older than Archibald. Between him and Grace there were two brothers, Fred and Clyde, and beyond Grace a string of girls ending in Dottie, who was not yet ten. Archibald used to forget their ages and mix them up in the 94 most helpless way; he was never quite sure if Isabel were eighteen or twenty, or whether Clara or Susie came next. He once forgot Laura altogether, and was only reminded of her existence by the shock of surprise at seeing the awkward-looking, ungainly girl standing before him, looking shyly up in his face.

Archibald was never quite alive to the blessing of having seven sisters, none of them with any pretension to beauty, unless it were Grace, though he was obliged to confess on his last visit to Leeds that Isabel was certainly passable-looking. He tried to take a proper amount of interest in them and be serenely unconscious of their want of grace and polish; but the effort was too manifest, and neither Clara nor Susie nor Laura regarded their grave elder brother with any lively degree of affection. Mrs. Drummond was a somewhat stern and exacting mother, but she was never so difficult to please as when her eldest son was at home.

“Home is never so comfortable when Archie is in it,” Susie would grumble to her favorite confidante, Grace. “Every one is obliged to be on their best behavior; and yet mother finds fault from morning to night. Dottie is crying now because she has been scolded for coming down to tea in a dirty pinafore.”

“Oh, hush, Susie dear! you ought not to say such things,” returned Grace, in her quiet voice.

Poor Grace! these visits of Archie were her only pleasures. The brother and sister were devoted to each other. In Archie’s eyes not one of the others was to be compared to her; and in this he was perfectly right.

Grace Drummond was a tall, sweet-looking girl of two-and-twenty,—not pretty, except in her brother’s opinion, but possessing a soft, fair comeliness that made her pleasant to look upon. In voice and manner she was extremely quiet,—almost grave; and only those who lived with her had any idea of the repressed strength and energy of her character, and the almost masculine clearness of intellect that lay under the soft exterior. One side of her nature was hidden from every one but her brother, and to him only revealed by intermittent flashes, and that was the passionate absorption of her affection in him. To her parents she was dutiful and submissive, but when she grew up the yoke of her mother’s will was felt to be oppressive. Her father’s nature was more in sympathy with her own; but even with him she was reticent. She was good to all her brothers and sisters, and especially devoted to Dottie; but her affection for them was so strongly pervaded by anxiety and the overweight of responsibility that its pains overbalanced its pleasures. She loved them, and toiled in their service from morning to night; but as yet she had not felt herself rewarded by any decided success. But in Archie her pride was equal to her love; she was critical, and her standard was somewhat high, but he satisfied her. What other people recognized as faults, she regarded 95 as the merest blemishes. Without being absolutely faultless, which was of course impossible in a creature of flesh and blood, he was still as near perfection, she thought, as he could be. Perhaps her affection for him blinded her somewhat, and cast a sort of loving glamour over her eyes; for it must be owned that Archibald was by no means extraordinary in either goodness or cleverness. From a boy she had watched his career with dazzled eyes, rejoicing in every stroke of success that came to him as though it were her own. Her own life was dull and laborious, spent in the overcrowded house in Lowder Street, but she forgot it in following his. Now and then bright days came to her,—few in number, but absolutely golden, when this dearly-loved brother came on a brief visit,—when they had snatches of delicious talk in the empty school-room at the top of the house, or he took her out with him for a long, quiet walk.

Mrs. Drummond always made some dry sarcastic remark when they came in, for she was secretly jealous of Archie’s affection for Grace. Hers was rather a monopolizing nature, and she would willingly have had the first share in her son’s affections. It somewhat displeased her to see him so wrapt up in the one sister to the exclusion of all the others, as she told him.

“I think you might have asked Matilda or Isabel to accompany you. The poor girls never see anything of you, Archie,” she would say plaintively to her son. But to Grace she would speak somewhat sharply, bidding her fulfil some neglected duty, which another could as well have performed, and making her at once understand by her manner that she was to blame in leaving Mattie at home.

“Mother,” Archibald said to her one day, when she had spoken with unusual severity, and the poor girl had retreated from the room, feeling as though she had been convicted of selfishness, “we must settle the matter about which I spoke to you last night. I have been thinking about it ever since. Mattie will not do at all. I must have Grace!”

Mrs. Drummond looked up from her mending, and her thin lips settled into a hard line that they always took when her mind was made up on a disagreeable subject. She had a pinafore belonging to Dottie in her hand; there was a jagged rent in it, and she sighed impatiently as she put it down; though she was not a woman who shirked any of her maternal duties, she had often been heard to say that her work was never done, and that her mending-basket was never empty.

“But if I cannot spare Grace,” she said, rather shortly, as she meditated another lecture to the delinquent Dottie.

“But, mother, you must spare her!” returned her son, eagerly, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, and watching her rapid manipulations with apparent interest. “Look here; I am quite in earnest. I have set my heart on having Grace. She is just the one to manage a clergyman’s household. She would be my right hand in the parish.” 96

“She is our right hand too, Archie; but I suppose we are to cut it off, that it may benefit you and your parish.”

Mrs. Drummond seldom spoke so sharply to her eldest son; but this request of his was grievous to her.

“I think Grace ought to be considered, too, in the matter,” he returned, somwhat sullenly. “She works harder than any paid governess, and gets small thanks for her trouble.”

“She does her duty,” returned Mrs. Drummond, coldly,—she very seldom praised any of her children,—“but not more than Mattie does hers. You are prejudiced strongly against your sister, Archie; you are not fair to her in any way. Mattie is a capital little housekeeper. She is economical, and full of clever contrivances. It is not as though I asked you to try Isabel. She is well enough, too, in her way, but a little flighty, and rather too pretty, perhaps—” but here a laugh from Archie grated on her ear.

“Too pretty!—what an absurd idea! The girl is passable-looking, and I will not deny that she has improved lately; but, mother, there is not one of the girls that can be called pretty except Grace.”

Mrs. Drummond winced at her son’s outspoken words. The plainness of her daughters was a sore subject.

She had never understood why her girls were so ordinary-looking. She had been a handsome girl in her time, and was still a fine-looking woman. Her husband, too, had had a fair amount of good looks, and, though he stooped, was still admirable in her eyes. The boys, too, were thoroughly fine fellows. Fred was decidedly handsome, and so was Clyde; and as for her favorite Archie, Mrs. Drummond glanced up at him as he stood beside her.

He certainly looked a model young clergyman. His features were good, but the lower part of his face was quite hidden by the fair mustache and the soft silky beard. He had thoughtful gray eyes, which could look as severe as hers sometimes; and, though his shoulders were somewhat too sloping, there could be no fault found with his figure. He was as nice-looking as possible, she thought, and no mother could have been better satisfied. But why, with the exception of Grace and Isabel, were her girls so deficient in outward graces? It could not be denied that they were very ordinary girls. Laura was overgrown and freckled, and had red hair; Susie was sickly-looking, and so short-sighted that they feared she would have to take to spectacles; and Clara was stolid and heavy-looking, one of those thick-set girls that dress never seems to improve. Dottie had a funny little face; but one could not judge of her yet. And Mattie,—Mrs. Drummond sighed again as she thought of her eldest daughter,—Mattie was thirty; and her mother felt she would never marry. It was not that she was so absolutely plain,—people who liked her said Mattie had a nice face,—but she was so abrupt, so uncouth in her awkwardness, 97 such a stranger to the minor morals of life, that it would be a wonder indeed if she could find favor in any man’s eyes.

“I do think you are too hard on your sisters,” returned Mrs. Drummond, stung by her son’s remark. “Isabel was very much admired at her first party last week. Mrs. Cochrane told me so, and so did Miss Blair.” She could have added that her maternal interest had been strongly stirred by the mention of a certain Mr. Ellis Burton, who she had understood had paid a great deal of attention that evening to Isabel, and who was the eldest son of a wealthy manufacturer in Leeds. But Mrs. Drummond had some good old-fashioned notions, and one of these was never to speak on such delicate subjects as the matrimonial prospects of her daughters: indeed, she often thanked heaven she was not a match-making mother,—which was as well, under the circumstances.

“Well, well, we are not talking about Isabel,” returned her son, impatiently. “The question is about Grace, mother. I really do wish very much that you and my father would stretch a point for me here. I want her more than I can say.”

“But, Archie, you must be reasonable. Just think a moment. Your father cannot afford to send the girls to school, or to pay for a good finishing governess. We have given Grace every advantage; and just as she is making herself really useful to me in the school-room, you want to deprive me of her services.”

“You know I offered to pay for Clara’s schooling,” returned her son, reproachfully. “She is more than sixteen, is she not! Surely Mattie could teach the others?”

But Mrs. Drummond’s clear, concise voice interrupted him:

“Archie, how can you talk such nonsense? You know poor Mattie was never good at book-learning. She would hardly do for Dottie. Ask Grace, if you doubt my word.”

“Of course I do not doubt it, mother,” in rather an aggravated voice, for he felt he was having the worst of the argument.

“Then why do you not believe me when I tell you the thing you ask is impossible?” replied his mother more calmly. “I am sorry for you if you are disappointed, Archie; but you undervalue Mattie,—you do indeed. She will make you a nice little housekeeper, and, though she is not clever, she is so amiable that nothing ever puts her out; and visiting the poor and sick-nursing are more in her line than in Grace’s. Mrs. Blair finds her invaluable. She wanted her for one of her district visitors, and I said she had too much to do at home.”

Archie shrugged his shoulders. Mrs. Blair was the wife of the vicar of All Saints’, where the Drummonds attended, and from a boy she had been his pet aversion. She was a bustling, managing woman, and of course Mattie was just to her taste. He did not see much use in continuing the conversation; with all his affection for his mother,—and she was better loved by her sons than by her daughters,—he knew her to be as immovable 98 as a rock when she had once made up her mind. He thought at first of appealing to his father on Grace’s behalf, but abandoned this notion after a few minutes’ reflection. His father was decided and firm in all matters relating to business, but for many years past he had abandoned the domestic reins to his wife’s capable hands. Perhaps he had proved her worth and prudence; perhaps he thought the management of seven daughters too much for any man. Anyhow, he interfered less and less as the years went on; and if at any time he differed from his wife, she could always talk him over, as her son well knew.

When the subject had been first mooted in the household, he had said a word or two to his father, and had found him very reluctant to entertain the idea of parting with Grace. She was his favorite daughter, and he thought how he should miss her when he came home weary and jaded at night.

“I don’t think it will do at all,” he had said, in an undecided dissatisfied tone. “Won’t one of the other girls serve your turn? There’s Mattie, or that little monkey Isabel, she is as pert and lively as possible. But Grace; why, she is every one’s right hand. What would the mother or the young ones do without her?”

No; it was no use appealing to his father, Archie thought, and might only make mischief in the house. He and Grace must make up their mind to a few more years’ separation. He turned away after his mother’s last speech, and finally left the room without saying another word. There was a cloud on his face, and Mrs. Drummond saw that he was much displeased; but, though she sighed again as she took up a pair of Clyde’s socks and inspected them carefully, there was no change in her resolution that Mattie, and not Grace, should go to the vicarage for the year’s visit that was all Archie had asked.

There are mothers and mothers in this world,—some who are capable of sacrificing their children to Moloch, who will barter their own flesh and blood in return for some barren heritage or other. There are those who will exact from those dependent on them heavy tithes of daily patience and uncomplaining drudgery; while others, who are “mothers indeed” give all, asking for nothing in return.

Mrs. Drummond was a good woman. She had many virtues and few faults. She was lady-like, industrious and self-denying in her own personal comforts, an exemplary wife, and a tolerant mistress; but she was better understood by her sons than by her daughters.

Her maternal instincts were very strong, and no mother had more delighted in her nursery than she had in hers. As long as there was a baby in the house the tenderness of her love was apparent enough. She wore herself out tending her infants, and no one ever heard her say a harsh word in her nursery.

But as her children grew up, there was much clashing of wills in the household. Her sons did not fear her in the least; but 99 with her daughters it was otherwise. They felt the mother’s strong will repressive; it threatened to dwarf their individuality and cramp that free growth that is so necessary to young things.

Dottie, who by virtue of being the last baby had had more than her fair amount of petting, was only just beginning to learn her lesson of unquestioning obedience; and, as she was somewhat spoiled, her lesson was hard one. But Laura and Susie and Clara had not yet found out that their mother loved them and wished to be their friend; they were timid and reserved with her, and took all their troubles to Grace. Even Mattie, who was her first-born, and who was old enough to be her mother’s companion, quailed and blushed like a child under the dry caustic speeches at which Clyde and Fred only laughed.

“You don’t understand the mother. Her bark is worse than her bite,” Clyde would say to his sister sometimes. “She is an awfully clever woman, and it riles her to see herself surrounded by such a set of ninnies. Now, don’t sulk, Belle. You know Mattie’s a duffer compared to Grace; aren’t you, Matt?”

At which truism poor Mattie would hang her head.

“Yes, Clyde; I know I am dreadfully stupid sometimes, and that makes mother angry.”

Mrs. Drummond often complained bitterly of her daughters’ want of confidence in her, but she never blamed herself for the barrier that seemed between them. She was forever asserting maternal authority, when such questions might have been safely laid to rest between her and her grown-up daughters. Mrs. Challoner’s oneness of sympathy with her girls, her lax discipline, her perfect equality, would have shocked a woman of Mrs. Drummond’s calibre. She would not have tolerated or understood it for a moment.

“My girls must do as I wish,” was a very ordinary speech in her mouth. “I always do as my girls wish,” Mrs. Challoner would have said. And, indeed, the two mothers were utterly dissimilar; but it may be doubted whether the Challoner household were not far happier than the family in Lowder Street.