Our Gentleman Boarder 



garden, and visits from all of you from 

 time to time." 



Mother looked at Mary ; she was radiant 

 in the thought of the life she described ; 

 then Mother sighed. 



Arthur Trevanion wrote his letter, which 

 he read to my parents before sending 

 away. My Father was delighted with it, 

 and said it was beautiful and touching. 

 The writer addressed his parents most 

 dutifully and affectionately and asked when 

 he might bring Mary to see them — that to 

 see her was to love her, &c., all of which, 

 as my Father naively said as he wiped his 

 eyes, was " as pretty as a play." 



He never received any direct acknow^- 

 ledgement of his news : there came first a 

 silly little letter from his mother, who was 

 an invalid, saying, a proJ?os of nothing at 

 all, that she felt every day of her life more 

 convinced that any grief or shock would 

 kill her ; and a long letter from his uncle, a 

 bishop, who was also his godfather, which, 

 after a long preamble expressing his joy in 

 his dear nephew's fully recovered health, 

 trailed off into the necessity of travel as a 

 completing of education, and so, in a curi- 

 ously irrelevant fashion, to the glorious 

 privilege of the Christian of sacrificing all 

 personal desires and ambitions to the sacred 



