THERE IS NO HURRY. 167

on urgent business, and would be back in two
hours.

‘I don’t think,” exclaimed Charles, rubbing
his hands gleefully, ‘“ I don’t think, that if my
dear niece were happy, I should ever have been
so happy in all my life as I am at this moment.”

‘“‘T feel already,” replied John, “ as if a great
weight were removed from my heart; and were
it not for the debt which I have contracted to

ou Ah, Charles, I little dreamt, when I
looked down ‘from the hill over Repton, and
thought my store inexhaustible, that I should be
obliged to you thus late in life. And yet I pro-
test I hardly know where I could have drawn
in ; one expense grows so out of another. These
boys have been so very extravagant; but I shall
soon have the two eldest off; they cannot keep
them much longer waiting.”’

‘“ Work is better than waiting; but let the
lads fight their way; they have had, I suppose,
a good education; they ought to have had pro-
fessions. There is something to me. awfully
lazy in your ‘appointments ;’ a young man of
spirit will appoint himself; but it is the females
of a family, brought up, as yours have been,
who are to be considered. Women’s position
in society is changed from what it was some
years ago; it was expected that they must
marry; and so they were left, before their mar-
_ riage, dependent upon fathers and brothers, as
creatures that could do nothing for themselves.