Even accounts, sent home by the exceptionally enterprising who did
go to Canada, were, we found, scarcely trusted. Amos Bell, who
would have gone, if he had not been growing into my special personal
attendant, was letter-writer and reader to all his relations, and
revealed to us that it had been agreed that no letter should be
considered as genuine unless it bore a certain private mark. To be
sure, the accounts of prosperity might well sound fabulous to the
toilers and moilers at home. Harriet Martineau's Hamlets, which we
lent to many of our neighbours, is a fair picture of the state of
things. We much enjoyed those tales, and Emily says they were the
only political economy she ever learnt.
The model arrangements of our vestries led to a summons to my father
and the younger Mr. Fordyce to London, to be examined on the
condition of the pauper, and the working of the old Elizabethan
Poor-Law.
They were absent for about a fortnight of early spring, and Emily
and I could not help observing that our mother was unusually
uncommunicative about my father's letters; and, moreover, there was
a tremendous revolution of the furniture, a far more ominous token
in our household than any comet.
The truth came on us when the two fathers returned. Mine told me
himself that Frank Fordyce was so much displeased with Griffith's
conduct that he had declared that the engagement could not continue
with his consent.
Pages:
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260