"Your father has grown quite gray, and has begun to stoop. It makes my heart quite ache to see him sometimes," Mrs. Drummond wrote to her eldest son; "but he never says a word to any of us. He just goes through with it day after day."
At that time Archie was her great comfort. He had begun to make his own way early in life, understanding from the first that his parents could do very little for him. He had worked well at school, and had succeeded in obtaining one or two scholarships. When his university life commenced, and the household at Leeds became straitened in their circumstances, he determined not to encumber them with his presence.
He soon became known in his college as a reading-man and a steady worker; he was fortunate, too, in obtaining pupils for the long vacation. By and by he became a fellow and tutor of his college, and before he was eight-and-twenty the living of Hadleigh was offered to him. It was not at all a rich living,--not being worth more than three hundred a year,--and some of his Oxford friends would have dissuaded him from accepting it; but Archibald Drummond was not of their opinion. Oxford did not suit his constitution; he was never well there. Sussex air, and especially the sea-side, would give him just the tone he required. He liked the big old-fashioned house that would be allotted to him. He could take pupils and add to his income in that way; at present he had his fellowship. It was only in the event of his marriage that his income might not be found sufficient. At the present moment he had no matrimonial intentions: there was only one thing on which he was determined, and that was, that Grace must live with him and keep his house.
Grace was the sister next to him in age. Mattie,--or Matilda, as her mother often called her,--was the eldest of the family, and was two years older than Archibald. Between him and Grace there were two brothers, Fred and Clyde, and beyond Grace a string of girls ending in Dottie, who was not yet ten. Archibald used to forget their ages and mix them up in the most helpless way; he was never quite sure if Isabel were eighteen or twenty, or whether Clara or Susie came next. He once forgot Laura altogether, and was only reminded of her existence by the shock of surprise at seeing the awkward-looking, ungainly girl standing before him, looking shyly up in his face.