8 MAY-FAIR DAY AND

part of England, and vanished, as it were, entirely
from the knowledge of the family. The others, on the
contrary, grew up into the most steady and promising
manhood and womanhood. The girls he had educated
simply, as, according to his notions, might best fit
them for tradesmen’s wives; but to the brother he
gave the education of a gentleman and a scholar, and
lived carefully, and almost parsimoniously himself, to
maintain him respectably at Oxford. As regarded
him, his wishes were all fulfilled ; and on the evening
of the day on which the news came that Leonard had
received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he died, as
he sat quietly in his chair. The business of his life
was done; and at the advanced age of ninety-five he —
was borne to his grave, honoured by the whole town.
He left his house, and property to the amount of a
hundred a-year, to his nieces and their brother ; the
house for them to live in as long as they needed such
a home, and the money to his nephew, subject to a
payment of thirty pounds a year to each sister. Miss
Joanna was seven-and-twenty at the death of her
uncle—a plain, old-fashioned little woman, who
looked six or seven years older than she was; whilst
Dorothy, on the contrary, looked younger, and though
four-and-twenty, had all the bloom and liveliness of
eighteen. Prepossessing, however, as was Dorothy,
she, at the time of her uncle's death, had no accepted
lover ; whilst Joanna had been engaged to a stationer
and printer of Lichfield, of the name of Allen, for a
couple of years, and had only deferred her marriage
from reluctance to leave her old relative in the then
declining state of his health.

In such a little town as Utceter, everybody knew
everybody's affairs ; and therefore, no sooner was the