Martyn's holidays had been a time of rapture to her,
for there was no one to attend much to her at home, and she was too
young to enter into the weight of anxiety; so the two had run as
wild together as a gracious well-trained damsel of ten and a
fourteen-year-old boy with tender chivalry awake in him could well
do. To be out of the way was all that was asked of her for the
time, and all old delights, such as the robbers' cave, were renewed
with fresh zest.
'It was the sweetest and the last.'
And though Martyn was gone back to school, the child felt the wrench
from home most severely. As she told me on one of those sorrowful
days, 'She did think she had come back to live at dear, dear little
Hillside all the days of her life.' Poor child, we became convinced
that this vehement attachment to Griffith's brothers was one factor
in Mrs. Fordyce's desire to make a change that should break off
these habits of intimacy and dependence.
Pluralities had not become illegal, and Frank Fordyce, being still
the chief landholder in Hillside, and wishing to keep up his
connection with his people, did not resign the rectory, though he
put the curate into the house, and let the farm. Once or twice a
year he came to fulfil some of a landlord's duties, and was as
genial and affectionate as ever, but more and more absorbed in the
needs of Beachharbour, and unconsciously showing his own growth in
devotion and activity; while he brought his splendid health and
vigour, his talent, his wealth, and, above all, his winning charm of
manner and address, to that magnificent work at Beachharbour, well
known to all of you; though, perhaps, you never guessed that the
foundation of all those churches and their grand dependent works of
piety, mercy, and beneficence was laid in one young girl's grave.
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