.

In which Pen is kept waiting at the Door, while the Reader.
is informed who little Laura was.
Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of Cambridge University who came to pass the long vacation at the village where young Helen Thistlewood was living with her mother, the widow of the lieutenant slain at Copenhagen.

This gentleman, whose name was the Reverend Francis Bell, was nephew to Mrs.Thistlewood, and by consequence, own cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should take lodgings in his aunt's house, who lived in a very small way; and there he passed the long vacation, reading with three or four pupils who accompanied him to the village.

Mr.Bell was fellow of a college, and famous in the University for his learning and skill as a tutor.
His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the reverend gentleman was engaged to be married, and was only waiting for a college living to enable him to fulfil his engagement.

His intended bride was the daughter of another parson, who had acted as Mr.Bell's own private tutor in Bell's early life, and it was whilst under Mr.Coacher's roof, indeed, and when only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that the impetuous young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha Coacher, whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden.