THE TWO ARISTO re CHAPTER "I'm sure I don't know wh do with him!" murmured M wife of a thriving apothecary and garrison town of W.; g at an uncouth, well-grown who sat refreshing himself wit thing more substantial than to corner of her roomy parlour, girls in pinafores watched, wi "The best thing to be done with him, just now, is to let him eat his supper in peace, and go to bed after his journey," rejoined one of the elder daughters, engaged with their mother at the evening table in homely needle-workmending or making. "His father might be angry at missing sight of him; and Barneson won't be home these two hours. He has got to stop at Stoke on his way back." Too intent upon his supper to be disconcerted by their observations, Mark Barneson munched on in silence. He felt himself a stranger at home. Adopted in early childhood by his mother's brother, a wealthy northcountry farmer, by whom he had been educated at a commercial school at York, his brother and sisters were as yet scarcely known to him and though the Barneson family had outthrived the difficulties which, at the time, suggested the adoption, they had learned with dismay, at the recent decease of Mark Holden, Mrs. Barneson at finding h spring overlooked by her who, till his marriage a few treated them as his heirs, mourning was exhibited narrow, and crape much too the severe decorum of a catl No less offensive, however, eyes of W., was the hast widowed Mrs. Holden signi that steps must be taken f their son. In consequen marriage, he had been left o --a superannuated head-bo matical proficiency had put i puzzled usher to the blush; time for his parents to dec career. |