The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

MUNRO'S PUBLICATIONS.

THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.—POCKET EDITION.

[CONTINUED ON THIRD PAGE OF COVER.]

ADDIE'S HUSBAND.

CHAPTER I.

"'Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, policeman, plowboy, gentleman—' Adelaide Lefroy, lift your lovely head, my dear; you're to marry a gentleman."

Miss Adelaide, who is absorbed in the enjoyment of a ruddy ribstone pippin, turns her blooming freckled face to the speaker, and answers pleasantly, though a little indistinctly—

"I'm to marry a gentleman, brother Hal? Well, I guess I've no particular objection! Whenever he comes, he will find me ready to do him homage, and no mistake! Can't you tell me more about him? 'A gentleman' is rather vague. Is he to be rich, poor, or something between? Am I to share his gentility in a Belgravian mansion or a suburban villa?"

"The oracle does not say. I can't tell you any more, Addie. I've come nearer the point with the others, though. Pauline is to be a soldier's bride, Goggles a policeman's!"

"Don't you believe him, Addie!" burst in Goggles, a pale delicate-looking child of twelve, with large protruding eyes and a painfully inquiring turn of mind. "He cheated horribly; he ran the policeman in before the tailor the second time, and left out the sailor."

"I didn't, miss—I did it quite fairly. You had four chances; you got the tinker once and the policeman three times. You're to marry a bobby—there's no hope for you!"

"I won't, I won't, I won't!" she retorts passionately, angry tears welling into her big, foolish eyes. "I won't marry a policeman, Hal! I'd rather die an old maid ten times over."

"First catch your policeman, my dear," chimes in Pauline, languidly waving aside a swarm of gnats dancing round her beautiful dusky head. "You'll not find many of that ilk sneaking round our larder, I can tell you!"

"I don't care whether I do or not. I won't marry a—"

"That will do, Lottie; we have had quite enough of this nonsense," interposes Addie, suddenly and unexpectedly assuming the tones of a reproving elder sister. "You came out here to study, and I don't think either you or Pauline has read that French exercise once, though you promised Aunt Jo you would have it off by heart for her this afternoon. Give me the book; I'll hear you. Translate 'I am hungry; give me some cheese.'"

"Je suis faim; donnez-moi du—du—"

"No; wrong to begin with. It is J'ai faim, 'I have hunger.'"

"'I have hunger!'" grumbles Lottie. "That just shows what a useless humbugging language French is! Fancy any one but an idiot saying, 'I have hunger,' instead of—"

"Don't talk so much. 'Have you my brother's penknife?'"

"Avez-vous mon frère's plume-couteau?"

Miss Lefroy tosses back the tattered Ahn in speechless disgust.

"Never mind, Goggles; I'll give you a sentence to translate," whispers Hal teasingly. "Listen! Esker le policeman est en amour—eh? That's better than anything in an old Ahn or Ollendorff, isn't it? Esker le poli—"

"Hal, do leave your sister alone, and attend to your own task. I don't believe you have got that wretched sum right yet, though you have been at it all the morning."

"And such a toothsome sum too!" says Pauline, leaning forward and reading aloud the problem inscribed on the top of the cracked greasy slate in Aunt Jo's straggling old fashioned writing—

"'Uncle Dick gave little Jemmy five shillings as a Christmas-box. He went to a pastry-cook's, and bought seven mince-pies at twopence halfpenny each, a box of chocolate, nine oranges at one shilling and sixpence per dozen; he gave tenpence to a poor boy, and had four-pence left. What was the price of the chocolate?'"

"It's a rotten old sum—that's what it is!" says Hal trenchantly. "What's the sense of annoying a fellow with mince-pies and things when he hasn't the faintest chance of getting outside one for—"

"Hal, don't be vulgar!"

"Besides, you can change the pies into potatoes or rhubarb-powders if you like," puts in Goggles spitefully, "and work the sum all the same. I'll tell auntie you did nothing but draw the dogs all the morning."

"Yah! Tell-tale tit, your tongue shall be split!"

"Why did you say I'd marry a—"

"Charlotte, hold your tongue at once!"

There is a ring of authority in Miss Lefroy's fresh voice that insures silence.

Pauline throws herself back upon the mossy sward, yawning heavily; Addie weaves herself a wreath of feathery grasses and tinted autumn-leaves, then picks a milky-petaled flower, which she stealthily and cautiously begins to fray.

"'Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, policeman, plowboy, gentleman—' Again! How very strange! There seems a fate in it! I wish I could find out more, though. I can't bring it to 'soldier'—heigh-ho!"

It is a still slumberous noon in early October: a mellow sun trickles through "th' umbrageous multitude of leaves," which still linger, vivid-hued, on the stately timber that shelters Nutsgrove, the family residence of the pauper Lefroys.

Nutsgrove is a low rambling brick manor-house, built in the time of the Tudors, surrounded by a stone terrace leading to a vast parterre, which, in the days of their opulence, the Lefroys were wont to maintain, vied in beauty and architectural display with the famous gardens of Nonsuch, in the reign of Henry VIII., sung by Spenser, but which now, alas, was a ragged wilderness, covered with overgrown distorted shrubs, giant weeds, ruinous summer-houses, timeworn statues, and slimy pools, in which once splashed fairy-mouthed fountains.

"So pure and shiny that the silver floode
Through every channel one might running see"

to the bottom,

"All paved beneath with jasper shining light."

Beyond this acreage of desolation is the orchard, protected by crumbling walls, creeping into the famous nut-grove, the uncultured beauty of which the noisome hands of neglect and decay have not touched.

As the nut-grove was in the days of Tristran le Froi, when he established himself on Saxon soil, so it is now—a green-canopied retreat, carpeted with moss and fringed with fern; it is the chosen home of every woodlark, blackbird, thrush, and squirrel of taste in the shire—the nursery, school-room, El Dorado of the five young Lefroys, children of Colonel Robert Lefroy, commonly known as "Robert the Devil" in the days of his reckless youth and unhonored prime, a gentleman who bade his family and his native land goodnight in rather hurried fashion about three years before.

"There goes Bob! I wonder did he get the ferret out of old Rogers?" exclaims Hal, breaking a drowsy silence. "I wish he'd come and tell us."

But the heir of the house of Lefroy, heedless of appealing cry and inviting whistle, stalks homeward steadily, a rank cigarette hanging from his beardless lips, a pair of bull-pups clinging to his heels. He is a tall shapely lad of eighteen, with a handsome gypsy face and eyes like his sister Pauline's—large, dark, full of haughty fire.

"How nasty of him not to come!" grumbles the younger brother. "I wonder what has put his back up? Perhaps old Rogers turned crusty, and wouldn't lend the ferret. Shouldn't wonder, because—"

"The gong, the gong at last!" cries Pauline, springing to her feet. "I didn't know I was so hungry until its welcome music smote my ears. Come along, family."

They need no second bidding. In two minutes the grove is free from their boisterous presence, and they are flying across the lawn, their mongrel but beloved kennel barking, yelping, and scampering enthusiastically around, making the autumn noon hideous.

"What's for dinner?"

"Rabbits!"

"Rabbits! Ye gods—again! Why, this is the fourth day this week that we've fared on their delectable flesh!" cries Robert, striding into the dining-room in grim disgust.

"At this rate we'll soon clear Higgins's warren for him!" chimes in Hal.

"Aunt Jo, let me say grace to-day, will you?"

"Certainly, my dear," Aunt Jo responds, somewhat surprised at the request. She is a mild, sheep faced old gentlewoman, with weary eyes that within the last two years have rained tears almost daily.

Pauline folds her slim sunburnt hands, bows her head, and murmurs reverently—

"Of rabbits young, of rabbits old,
Of rabbits hot, of rabbits cold,
Of rabbits tender, rabbits tough,
We thank thee, Lord, we've had enough!"

"Amen!" respond the family, in full lugubrious choir.

"I wonder if I shall know the flavor of butcher's meat if I ever taste it again?" says Robert presently, with exaggerated exertion hacking a cumbrous limb that covers his cracked plate—a plate which a china-collector would have treasured in a cabinet.

"You certainly won't taste butcher's meat again until the butcher's bill is paid," answers Aunt Jo sharply. "Thirteen pounds eleven and sixpence—so he sent me word when Sarah tried to get a mutton-chop for Lottie the day she was so ill. Until his bill is paid, he won't trust us with another pound of flesh; that was the message he sent to me—to me—Josephine Darcy! Oh that I should live to receive such a message from a tradesman! What would my dear uncle the bishop have felt if he could have heard it?"

"But he can't hear it, auntie dear," says Lottie, consolingly. "He's dead, you know."

"Not dead, but gone before," reproves Miss Darcy, burying her face in her handkerchief.

"Water-works again!" groans Robert, sotto voce. "Use the plug, some one."

Addie obeys the elegant order by slipping her arm round the old lady's neck.

"There, there, dear; don't take on so. You fret too much about us; you'll make yourself ill in the end. Cheer up, auntie dear, cheer—"

"Cheer up!" she interrupts, in a wailing voice. "Oh, child, it is easy for you to talk in that light way! Cheer up, when poverty is at the door, starvation staring us in the face! Cheer up, when I look at you five neglected, deserted children, growing up half fed, wholly uneducated, clothed as badly as the poorest laborer on the vast estates your grandfather owned—you my poor dead sister's children! Oh, Addie, Addie, you talk and feel like a child—a child of the summer, who has not the sense, the power to feel the chill breath of coming winter! How can you know? How can you understand? You heard your brothers and your sisters here grumbling and railing at me not five minutes ago because I had not legs of mutton and ribs of beef to feed you with, grumbling because this is the fourth time in one week you have had to dine off rabbit. Well"—with a sudden burst of anguish—"do you know, if Steve Higgins, devoted retainer that he is, had not the kindness, the forethought to supply us, as he has been doing for the last month, with the surplus of his warren, you'd have had to dine off bread and vegetables altogether? For not a scrap of solid food will they supply us with in Nutsford until my wretched dividends are due, and that is four months off yet. Oh, Addie dear, don't try to talk to me; I can bear up no longer! Sorrows have come to me too late in life. I—I can bear up no longer!"

Her voice dies away in hysterical sobs. By this time the family are grouped round the afflicted lady; even Robert's hard young arm encircles her heaving shoulder. He joins as vehemently as any in the sympathizing chorus.

"There, there; don't, auntie dear. Heaven will help us, you'll see!"

"Every cloud has a silver lining, every thorn-bush a blossom."

"Something is sure to turn up, never fear."

"And we shouldn't mind a bit if you wouldn't take on so and fret so dreadfully."

"Don't heed our grumblings; they're only noise. We'd just as soon have rabbit as anything else—wouldn't you, boys, wouldn't you? There, auntie, you hear them. Boys must grumble at something; it wouldn't be natural if they didn't."

"Oh, auntie, auntie, can't you believe us? We're quite, quite happy as we are. As long as we are all together, as long as we have the dear old place to live in, what does anything else matter? We're quite happy. We never want to change or go away, or wear grand clothes, talk French, or thump the piano like other common people. We don't—we don't indeed! If you would only leave off fretting, we'd leave off grumbling, and be all as happy as the day is long."

Somewhat cheered by this unanimous appeal, Miss Darcy wipes her eyes, though still protesting.

"I know that, I know that; as long as you're allowed to wander at your own sweet will, lie on haystacks, rifle birds' nests, strip the apple and cherry trees, hunt rats and rabbits, and, above all, do no lessons, and make no attempt to improve your minds in any way, you will be happy. But the question is, How long will these doubtful means of happiness be left to you? Acre after acre, farm after farm, has slipped from the family within the last thirty years. You have now but nominal possession of the house, garden, orchard, and part of the grove—only nominal possession, remember, for the place is mortgaged to the last farthing; the very pictures on the wall, the chairs you sit on, the china in the pantry, are all security for borrowed money. And—and, children"—impressively—"it is best for you to know the worst. If—if your—your father should cease to pay the interest on this money, why, his creditors could seize on this place and turn you out homeless on the roadside at an hour's notice!"

There is a deep silence; then comes a protesting outburst. Robert's dark face flushes wrathfully as he exclaims—

"But—but, Aunt Jo, he—he will—he must pay the interest, and give me a chance of reclaiming my birthright. He—he couldn't be so—so bad as to let that lapse under the circumstances."

"Circumstances may be too strong for him."

"In any case," says Pauline hopefully, "the creditors couldn't be so heartless, so devoid of all feelings of humanity as to turn us out like that; they must wait until some of us are dead, or married, or something. Where could we go?"

"Your father's creditors are Jews, Pauline; they are not famed for humanity or forbearance. However, as you say, children, it is best to look at the bright side of things, and trust in the mercy of Heaven."

"And in the mercy of a Jew too!" chimes in Addie.

"'Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions—fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter, as a Christian is? If you prick him, does he not bleed? If you tickle him, does he not laugh? If you poison him, does he not—'"

"Bravo, Addie—bravo; well done!"

"That was tall spouting, and no mistake! Where did you pick it all up?"

"That's Shakespeare," Addie answers, lifting her rosy pale face proudly—"it is from the 'Merchant of Venice;' I read the whole play through yesterday, and enjoyed it greatly."

"You imagined you did, my dear."

"Nothing of the kind, Robert; I found it most interesting."

"Don't tell me, Addie," says Pauline, with a tantalizing laugh, "that you found it as interesting as 'The Children of the Abbey,' 'The Castle of Otranto,' or 'The Heir of Redcliffe,' for I won't believe you."

"The styles are quite distinct; you could not possibly compare them," Addie retorts more grandly still. "I am going up to the grove now to read 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' I believe it's beautiful."

"Don't you think, my dear niece, you had better mend that hole in your stocking, just above the heel, first?" interposes Miss Darcy gently. "It has been in that yawning condition for the last two days; and, to say the least of it, it scarcely looks ladylike."

"I noticed it when I was dressing," assents Addie, placidly, "but quite forgot about it afterward. Who'll lend me a thimble and a needle and some cotton?"

CHAPTER II.

"Three hundred years, isn't it, Addie, since the Lefroys first settled at Nutsgrove?"

"Three hundred years," repeats Addie automatically. "Since the year of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, A.D., 1572, when Tristran le Froi, Sieur de Beaulieu, fled from his patrimonial estates in Anjou to England, where he settled at Nutsgrove, and married, in 1574, Adelaide Marion, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Tisdale of Flockton, by whom he had issue, three sons and two daughters—Stephen, Robert, Tristran, who—"

"Three hundred years!" repeats Robert, with fierce bitterness, a lurid light gleaming in his eyes. "What right had he to treat me like that? He got it from his father, who got it from his, and so on backward from son to father for generations. Why should I be made to suffer for his iniquity? Why should I lose what he inherited in solemn trust for his son or next of kin? It is infamous, it is monstrous! I suppose it would be wrong to wish that one's own father—"

"Oh, hush, Robert—hush!"

Addie's hand is placed over the boy's quivering mouth; he is silenced.

Eight months have gone by, and the great evil foreseen by poor Aunt Jo has come to pass.

Colonel Lefroy, out of reach of remonstrance or appeal, has let the old home of his forefathers pass out of his hands and his son's forever. The Jews have seized on the estate, evicted its nominal possessors, sold by public auction the goods and chattels, the pictures, china, plate, moldy tapestries, tattered carpets, curtains, scratched and time stained Chippendale; even the worthless relics of their nursery-days the homeless wretched children have not been allowed to take with them. The house and immediately surrounding land, after some brisk competition, has been purchased by Tom Armstrong, the great manufacturer, owner of some half-dozen of the most unsavory chimneys in Kelvick, which at times, when the wind is blowing due south, carry their noxious effluvia over the dewy acres of Nutsgrove and the surrounding estates, and most unpleasantly tickle the noses of aristocratic county proprietors, who have nothing in common with the busy plebeian heart of commerce and inventive industry throbbing in the very center of their pastures.

And now Tom Armstrong of Kelvick, a man of the people, who has risen from the lowest rung of the social ladder, is master of Nutsgrove. And the dark-eyed, blue-blooded Lefroys stand, some two months after his installation, leaning against a five-barred gate in an upland meadow, gazing mournfully, and, oh! how bitterly down on the beloved home they have lost forever!

"Three hundred years," repeats Robert, with a dreary laugh. "Well, at any rate, it will take some time to wash the stains of our tenancy out of the old house, to remove all traces of our footsteps from the well-worn paths! By Jove, the wretched snob is at work already! Yes, look at his people hacking away at the flower-beds, ripping up the avenue, hammering away at the venerable walls! It's—it's enough to make one's blood boil in one's veins! He might at least have had the decency to wait until we had gone. I'd like to kick him from here to Kelvick."

"I don't think he'd let you, Bob," says matter-of-fact Hal. "He's a bigger man than you."

"Yes, but a plowman can't fight a gentleman; they're out of it in the first round. Look at the way I polished off the butcher's boy the day he insulted you—and he's twice my weight. I shouldn't be afraid to tackle Armstrong if I only had the chance, and souse him in one of his vile vitriol-tanks, too. That would stop his hacking and hammering until I was at least out of hearing."

"But, Bob," interposed Lottie, awed by her brother's lordly threats, "you're mistaken. That man on the ladder by the west wall is not hammering or hacking anything; he's only trying to clean the big lobby window outside the housekeeper's room, which, I heard Aunt Jo say one day, hasn't been cleaned since the year poor mamma died, when I was a wee baby. It's so hard to reach, and doesn't open; and—and, Bob, you can hardly blame Mr. Armstrong for weeding those beds, for there were more dandelions and nettles in them last year than stocks or mignonette."

"You mark my words," continues Robert, with lowering impressiveness, heedless of his sister's explanation; "should any of us Lefroys stand in this meadow, say, this time five years, we shall not recognize the face of our old home. All its beloved landmarks will be swept away; the flickering foliage of the grove will have disappeared to make way for stunted shrubs, starveling pines, and prim Portuguese laurels: the ivied walls, the mossy stonework, the straggling wealth of creeper, will have been carted away to display the gaudy rawness of modern landscape-gardening; the little river gurgling through the tangled fern and scented thorn-bushes will be treated like the canal of a people's park; the whole place will reek of vitriol, of chemical manures and commercial improvements. So say good-by to Nutsgrove while you may, for you will never see it again—never again!"

"Oh, Robert, Robert, do you think it will be as bad as that?" cries Addie, turning her soft gray eyes to his wrathful face in wistful appeal.

"Of course I do! What chance has it of escaping moneyed Vandalism? If even a gentleman had bought it, no matter how poor—But what quarter can one expect from the hands of an illiterate vitriol-monger, a low-bred upstart, like that Armstrong?"

"Do you know, I think you are exaggerating his defects a little, Bob?" says Addie, languidly. "He's a plain kind of man certainly, both in manner and appearance; but—but he would not give me the idea of being exactly ill-bred. He does not talk very loud or drop his 'h's,' for instance."

"No, that's just it. I'd respect him far more if he did; it's the painful veneer, the vague, nameless vulgarity of the man that repels me so, that gives me the idea of his being perpetually on the watch in case an 'h' might slip from him unawares. If he were an honest horny-handed son of toil, not ashamed of his shop or his origin, not ashamed to talk of his 'orse and 'is 'ouse like Higgins and Joe Smith, I should not dislike him so much; but he's not that style of man—he belongs to the breed of the pompous upstart, the sort of man stocked with long caddish words that no gentleman uses, the man to call a house a domicile, a horse a quadruped, a trench an excavation, and so on. Talk of the—There goes the beggar, quadruped and all! I dare say he fancies himself a type of the genuine country squire. Ugh! Down, Hal—down, Goggles; he'd spot you in a moment! I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of thinking we'd look at him."

They descend from the gate and stand together, the five abreast, taking their farewell look, with swelling hearts, at the home where they have spent their happy careless youth in sheltered union. They are not a demonstrative family, the Lefroys—not given to moments of "gushing" or caressing; they quarrel frequently among themselves, coming of a hot-blooded race; yet, they are deeply attached to one another, having shared all the joys and sorrows of each others' lives, having no interests, no sympathies outside their immediate circle; and the thought of coming separation weighs heavily on their young hearts, as heavily as the pall of death.

"Well, we'd best make tracks," says Robert, turning away, his hands shading his eyes, "we'll not forget the 29th of May—your birthday, Hal, old chap. Last year, you remember we had tea in the grove, and old Sarah baked us a stunning cake; this year we have made our last pilgrimage together. Next year I wonder where we shall be? Scattered as far and as wide as the graves of a household, I fear."

At this point Addie, the most hot tempered but the most tender-hearted member of the family, breaks down, and flinging her arms round her brother's neck, sobs out piteously—

"O, Bob, Bob, my own darling boy, I—I can't bear it—I can't bear to have you go away over that cruel cold sea! I shall never sleep at night thinking of you. Don't go away, don't go away; let's all stick together and—and—go—die—somewhere—together! Oh, Bob, Bob, my darling, my darling!"

There is another general break-down; they all cling one to another, Hal and Lottie howling dismally, Robert's haughty eyes swimming too in tears, until the sound of voices in a neighboring field forces them to compose themselves, and they walk slowly across the upland meadow, at the furthest corner of which they separate, the boys, at the urgent invitation of their terriers, making for a rat-haunted ditch in the neighborhood, the girls strolling toward Nutsford through the northern end of the grove.

Miss Lefroy stalks on moodily in front, Lottie, still battling with her emotion, clinging to her firm young arm. Pauline walks behind alone, full of bitter thought, her straight brows painfully puckered. On the morrow a new, strange life is to begin for her, one that she knows will be eminently distasteful; her free young spirit is to be "cribbed, cabined, confined," in the narrow path of conventionality at last, and the prospect dismays her. Look as far ahead as she can, she can see no break in the gathering gloom—can see only that at seventeen the summer of her life is over and the long winter about to begin. Hope tells her no flattering tale; she does not know that in herself she holds the key of a triumphant liberty, of a future of sunlight, of glory, of all that is sweet too, and coveted by womanhood. Pauline does not know that she is beautiful, does not feel the shadow of her coming power, or guess that the lithe willowy grace of her straight young form, the glorious black of her eyes, the pure glow of her brunette skin, the chiseled outline of her small features, will purchase for her goods and pleasures of which her careless innocent girlhood has never dreamed. No lover has whispered in her ear "the music of his honey vows," and the cracked, fly-stained mirrors at Nutsgrove have told her nothing; and so she is sad and sorrow-laden, and the burden of dependence and uncongenial companionship looming before her seems to her almost more than she can bear.

In silence they pass out of the green gloom of the grove, where "fair enjeweled May" has touched with balmy breath each tiny bud, each tender leaf,

"Half prankt with spring, with summer half embrowned."

Under a scented hawthorn-hedge, skirting the main road that leads into the High Street of Nutsford, the Misses Lefroy pause for a moment to adjust the sylvan vagaries of their toilet.

Addie pulls a long limp plume of hartstongue and branch of "woodbine faintly streaked with red" from the battered leaf of her straw hat, which she pitches lightly over her straggling locks, then gives her pelerine a hasty unmeaning twitch that carries the center hook from the right to the left shoulder, and feels perfectly satisfied with her appearance. Pauline steps in front of her sister, with a request to stand on a troublesome bramble caught in her skirt. Addie without hesitation puts forth a patched unlovely boot, and the other moves forward with a brisk jerk, leaving not only the incumbrance well behind, but also a flounce of muddy lining hanging below her skirt; and thus the descendants of the Sieur de Beaulieu saunter down the High Street, with heads erect, callous, haughtily indifferent to public opinion, looking as it the whole county belonged to them.

"Look, mother—look at those poor Lefroys!" cried Miss Ethel Challice, the banker's daughter, as she drives past in her elegantly appointed C-spring landau, perfectly gloved, veiled, and shod. "Aren't they awful? Not a pair of gloves among them! And their boots—elastic sides—what my maid wouldn't wear! Patched at the toes, too! You would never say they were ladies, would you?"

"Poor children! They have no mother, you know, darling, and a bad, bad father."

"Oh, yes, I know! But he was such a handsome, attractive man! Don't you remember, mother, at Ascot, three years ago, when he asked us to lunch on his drag, and introduced me to Lord Squanderford, how fascinating we all thought him?"

Mrs. Challice shrugs her portly shoulders.

"Fascinating, but thoroughly unprincipled, my dear. I do pity his poor children. What will become of them, thrown destitute on the world? Well, I have nothing for which to blame myself. I tried to do my best for them; but—whether it was from want of manner or through senseless pride I can not tell—Miss Lefroy did not respond to my attempted civility, and the last day I called—about a year ago—I saw the whole family flying from the house across the wilderness like a crowd of scared savages, when the carriage stopped at the hall door."

"Oh, it was all want of manners, of course, mother dear! That poor girl would not know how to receive a visitor or enter a drawing-room. She has never been in any society, you know. All the county people have left off calling on them too; they treated them just in the same way that they treated you. They're perfect savages!"

"The second girl promises to be rather good-looking."

"Do you think so? She's too gypsified for my taste—looks as if she would be in keeping at a country fair, with a tambourine and a scarlet cap."

"She's a remarkably good-looking girl—that's what she is," Mr. Percy Challice puts in, with a knowing smile—"steps out like a thoroughbred, she does. 'Twould be well for you, my dear sister, if you had her action on the pavement."

"So I could have, if I wore boots and skirts like hers," retorts Miss Ethel sullenly.

"Then I'd strongly advise you, my dear, to get the address of her milliner and bootmaker at once."

CHAPTER III.

"I say, Pauline, is that Miss Rossitor going in at No. 3? It's just like what I remember of her dear old-maidish figure. I know she was expected home this month."

"Poor old Rossitor!" laughs Pauline. "Do you remember, Addie, the long mornings she used to spend trying to make Bob and you understand the difference between latitude and longitude?"

"I remember," answers Addie, with a sigh, "that she was wonderfully patient and painstaking with us, and I wish now with all my heart that I had profited more by her teaching. Pauline, I think I'll just run in and see if it is she. You and Lottie can return and let auntie know where I am."

Miss Rossitor, a neat bright-eyed little woman of thirty-five, daughter of a deceased clergyman, had, some three years before, undertaken the education of Colonel Lefroy's neglected children, spending three or four hours every morning in their dilapidated school-room. She had become much attached to her unruly pupils, and it was with sincere regret that she had to give them up and go abroad as resident governess in a French family, being very poor herself, and finding it impossible to get her quarterly applications for salary attended to by the gallant but ever-absent colonel.

"You old dear!" cries Addie, kissing the little lady vehemently. "It is you, really! I'm so glad to see you again! When did you arrive? How did you manage to get leave?"

"I arrived last night; mother did not expect me for another week. I managed to get leave, because, most fortunately—I mean unfortunately—well, well"—with a beaming smile—"we won't try to qualify the circumstance—at any rate, one of my pupils had a bad attack of rheumatic fever, and was ordered to some German baths for a couple of months, and, as the family have accompanied her, I got leave for the time being. Now let me have a look at you, my dear Addie. Well, to be sure, what an immense girl you have grown! But your face has not changed much. And all the others—the boys—I suppose they have shot up too? Three years do make a difference, do they not?"

"Rather!" cries poor Addie, lugubriously plunging at once into the subject of her woes. "It has made an immense difference to us. Oh, Miss Rossitor, you left us three years ago the happiest, the most contented and united family under the sun—you return, to find us the most miserable, destitute outcasts in England! Oh, oh!"

"There, there, child; don't give way so, don't, dear! Tell me all your troubles, Addie; it may lighten them for you. I don't know anything about you clearly: mother has not had time to tell me yet; we've had visitors all the morning."

"There—there is little to tell. About two months ago we were turned out of Nutsgrove. Every article of furniture was sold by auction—even—even mother's wedding-presents—and the place was bought by Tom Armstrong, the great vitriol and chemical manure man of Kelvick. That's the whole story."

"But your—your father, child! What of him? Surely he did not allow—"

"He—he—did nothing. He mortgaged every stick to the place, and did not even pay the interest on the money raised."

"And, Addie, where is he now?"

"I don't know," she answers drearily—"in America somewhere, I believe; he disappeared nearly three years ago. He backed the wrong horse for the Derby, just ran down here for half an hour, burned some papers in his study, kissed us all round, and went away. We never heard from him afterward—at least, not directly."

"But surely he can not have deserted you altogether—have left you five children totally unprovided for?"

"He left us with a capital of four pounds fifteen between us—four pounds fifteen—not a penny more! And we have had nothing from him since; and yet the Scripture tells us to honor our parents!"

"Hush, child—hush! We must not question the commands of Holy Writ. Why, if it comes to that, women are ordered to love, honor, and obey their husbands; and, oh, my dear, my dear," continues the little woman, the corkscrew ringlets of her frisette nodding with impressive emphasis, "if you could only have seen or heard the men some women are called upon to honor—to honor, mind you—why, you—"

"Ah, but that is different, quite different! A woman has the power of choosing her husband; if she selects the wrong man, there is no one to blame but herself. But a child can't choose its own father; if it could, you may be sure poor Bob wouldn't have selected one who would rob him of his patrimony and cast him penniless on the world without even the resource of education."

"Come, Addie dear, are you not too severe on your father? He has had many temptations, has been unfortunate in his speculations; but, when he knows the state you are in, you may be sure he will make an effort to help you—probably send for you all and give you a home in the new world."

Addie does not reply at once; a sudden wave of color floods her soft face, and she says hurriedly—

"After all, why shouldn't I tell you? I—I dare say you will hear it from some one else; I—I suppose half the county knows it."

"Knows what, dear?"

"That our father has abandoned us altogether—that he has other family-ties we—we knew nothing of—"

"Addie, my dear, what are you talking of?"

"He did not leave England alone, Miss Rossitor," she answers excitedly; "he asked none of us to go with him, but he took two other children we had never heard of, and a—a wife. I believe she was an actress at a London theater—"

"My dear child," interrupts Miss Rossitor, much flurried and shocked, "where did you hear all this? Who told you? Do the others know?"

"No; I did not tell them—I don't mean to do so. I heard it all one day accidentally. Aunt Jo and Lady Crawford were discussing it; they did not know I was behind the curtain. My dress was all torn, and I didn't want Lady Crawford to see me, so I hid there, and—and was obliged to hear it all."

Poor Addie's crimson face sinks upon her outstretched arm; for a time she sobs bitterly, refusing to be comforted. However, a cup of tea has a somewhat soothing effect, and after a time she resumes her tale of desolation:

"When he went, poor Aunt Josephine came to take care of us—you know she was our mother's eldest sister, a maiden lady who lived with a widowed childless niece in a pretty little house at Leamington, where everything was peace and quietness and neatness—three things Aunt Jo loves better than anything else on earth; nevertheless she stayed on with us ever since, and has supported us on her annuity of eighty pounds a year."

"Supported six of you on eighty pounds a year! I can't believe that, Addie!"

"And yet it is true. We did not have dinners à la Russe, you understand, nor did we get our frocks from Paris, and the boys had to give up their schooling; but we managed to rub along somehow, and were happy enough, all except poor aunt, who has never enjoyed a peaceful hour since she left Leamington. We had the house, you know, and the garden, which was stocked with fruit and vegetables; there was an old cow too, and a few hens, who laid us an egg occasionally. Oh, we didn't mind—we got along famously! But now—now Heaven only knows what is to become of us!"

"My poor, poor child," exclaims Miss Rossitor, with tears in her voice, "this is too sad! Something must be done. You have some other relatives to help you? Where are you staying now?"

"I'll tell you all about it. When we left Nutsgrove, two months ago, we took up our quarters at Sallymount Farm, belonging to Steve Higgins, who was a stable-boy in grandfather's time, and who married our old nurse Ellen Daly. She had some spare rooms, and she asked us to use them while we looked about us and decided what was to be done. We began by sending round the hat, as Bob calls it, to all our kith and kin. You know in the old days we seemed to have a lot of prosperous relatives; I remember, when I was a small child, a whole band of cousins stopping at Nutsgrove for the Kelvick races, with their maids and valets. And so we thought, for the sake of the family name, they would help us; but—but somehow the hat failed to reach them; they seemed to have moved on, to have vanished into space—they weren't to be found, in fact."

"But there is Mrs. Beecher of Greystones, your father's half-sister. She couldn't possibly overlook you."

"No, she couldn't well, living within twenty miles and having no children of her own. She and the admiral came over and reviewed us en masse, and, I believe, were nervously indisposed for days afterward—the admiral had to swallow half a bottle of sherry before he recovered from the shock of our combined comeliness. They stayed an hour, and said as many disagreeable and insulting things during that time as we had ever heard in our lives before. However, the upshot of their visit was that Aunt Selina offered to send away her companion, Miss McToadie, and take Pauline in her place. Aunt Jo closed with her at once, not giving poor Polly a voice in her fate; and so she is to go over to Greystones the day after to-morrow. Poor, poor Polly!"

"Well at any rate, she is sure of a home. The Beechers will eventually adopt her; and they are very rich people. You should not pity her, Addie; it would be very injudicious," says Miss Rossitor sagely.

"Oh, I didn't to her face! Adversity is teaching me wisdom, I can tell you. After that, Robert was put up in the market, and found wanting in capacity for commercial or professional pursuits, so an old relative with an interest in shipping got him a berth on board a vessel going to China with a cargo of salt. The most horrid line in the whole mercantile service, poor Bob says; and the worst of it is he won't get a penny of salary for nearly three years, and he'll have to work like a galley-slave all the time. Fine opening, is it not? But beggars can not be choosers, you would say. Well, Miss Rossitor, that is all our relatives have done for us so far, except that dear Aunt Jo—Heaven bless her!—has adopted, or, at least, will try to adopt Lottie, and take her back to Leamington when we break up. There is some talk too of getting Hal into a third-rate endowed school near London. Judge Lefroy, a cousin out in India, promises to pay ten pounds a year toward it if two other members of the family subscribe the same sum. But we've had no other advances; and so Hal's affairs are in statu quo at present; in other words, he's a pensioner on the poor aunt who has taken Lottie."

"And you, my dear, have you any prospect for yourself?"

"I? Miss Rossitor, I am—don't laugh, please—trying to get a situation as governess to some very small and ignorant children. You remember of old my list of accomplishments? Well, I haven't swelled their quantity or quality since. I can't run a clean scale up the piano yet; I don't know the difference between latitude and longitude; compound proportion is as great a mystery to me as ever; and yet three times last week I offered my services to the public in the columns of the 'Daily News,' 'Daily Telegraph,' and the 'Kelvick Gazette,' and received only one answer. It was from a lady who would give me a home, but no salary—which would not do, as I must at least have a few shillings to buy shoes and stockings, et cætera."

"Only one answer! That was unfortunate. You can not have worded your advertisement attractively enough, dear."

"Oh, yes, I did! Bob composed it in strict orthodox fashion. Unfortunately there were lots of other governesses advertising, and no one seeming to want them; but there was a great run on cooks and barmaids and housemaids. I don't know what is to become of me, for I can not and I will not live on poor auntie—that I'm determined! I'd—I'd rather scrub kitchen floors, or pick potatoes in the field like a laborer's daughter!" cries the girl passionately, her cheeks flushing.

"Addie," says Miss Rossitor slowly, hesitatingly, "I think I know of a situation that might suit you, if you really wish—"

"You do? Oh, you dear, you dear! Tell me quickly where it is."

"It's so wretched I'm almost ashamed to mention it; but you seem so anxious, dear," says Miss Rossitor deprecatingly. "A friend of mine is there at present; but she is leaving this week to better herself, as indeed she might easily do. No, no, Addie dear, I won't tell you about it—it's too miserable, too mean—"

"Oh, Miss Rossitor, dear friend, don't refuse to help me! I am not what I was; all my stupid pride is gone; work is all I crave. Oh, can't you feel for me, can't you understand me?" she pleads vehemently.

Miss Rossitor gently kisses the pleading upturned face, and then answers gravely—

"That will do, child; I will hesitate no longer. The family I allude to are retired Birmingham tradespeople, not particularly refined, I fear, in their habits or surroundings. They have four children ranging in age from five to twelve—one boy and three girls; these you would have to educate, and you would have to be with them all day, take them for walks, help the nurse to dress them in the mornings, even, I believe, occasionally to mend their clothes. Your salary for all this would be twenty-two pounds a year—think of that—twenty-two pounds a year!"

"Will you give me their address?" is all Addie says.

"I will write for you myself, dear child, it you wish it. You can at least make a trial; but I warn you that the life of a nursery-governess in an underbred household cramped probably in a suburban villa is very different from what you—"

"I know, I know; but I am prepared to bear anything. What does anything matter now that we are all separated and have lost our beloved home for ever? Oh, Miss Rossitor"—springing to her feet and pacing up and down the room with clinched hands—"that is the thought that stings, that paralyzes hope, that deadens energy—to think that it is gone from us for ever! Sometimes I feel that, if Heaven had made me a man, it would not have been so."

"What would you have done, Addie?"

"I would have thrown myself into the fight, and have struggled undaunted against any odds—against hardship and disappointment and failure—until I had won it all back, until I had ousted the upstart who supplanted us. If he, an illiterate tradesman, friendless, alone, without money, without education, without help of any kind, succeeded in amassing a large fortune, succeeded in becoming master-mariner on the great tide of industry in his native town, why should not I, with such a heart-moving aim in view—I, with the blood of heroes running in my veins—do so likewise? But what is the use of talking? What can a woman do, tied down, hampered, checked on every side by the superstition of ages? Oh, it is too stifling, too exasperating! Sometimes I wish I had never been born. What good am I? What place have I in the world? What—"

"You will find your use in the place Heaven gives you, my dear, if you only put your trust in Providence. Tell me, Addie, something about this prosperous upstart, Armstrong of Kelvick. Have you met him? What sort of man is he?"

"Oh, a very ordinary style of man indeed! There's nothing remarkable about him in one way or another. He seemed quiet and heavy, I thought; I didn't notice him very particularly. He came two or three times to the farm to talk over some business matters with auntie."

"Then you did not find him oppressively vulgar, did you?"

"No, not oppressively so; but I'm no judge of manners, you know, having so little to boast of myself; Bob and Polly, however, who understand these things, say that he is an out-and-out cad, that his every movement betrays him, and that no one but a person utterly devoid of delicacy and good taste would have sent us a present of flowers and vegetables out of our own garden as he did."

"He sent you flowers and vegetables! How was that?"

"Yes, to Aunt Jo. The last time he called she asked him, when he was leaving, how the peas were doing this year down near the currant-bushes—for you know our garden was supposed to produce the finest peas in the county; and that evening he sent her up a basket of flowers and vegetables, and a couple of quarts of gooseberries, enough to make a glorious 'fool;' but Robert pitched the whole lot out of the window indignantly, and when auntie sent the young Higginses to pick them up again, he went out and kicked them all round. He's awfully proud, you know, dear Robert; I remember you used to call him 'Robert the Magnificent.'"

"Yes; I have seldom met a young gentleman of his years who had such a high opinion of himself and his social dignity."

"He has just the same opinion now. I sometimes tell him he ought to have been born a sultan. And to think of him swabbing decks and tarring ropes—oh, dear!"

"The chances are that Mr. Armstrong sent you the flowers and vegetables only in a spirit of harmless kindness," says Miss Rossitor musingly.

"I dare say. People of that sort don't understand our feelings. Bob said that, had we given him the slightest encouragement, he'd have probably asked us to dinner. Well, I must be going now. Thank you sincerely for your much-needed kindness, dear friend. You'll let me know my fate as soon as possible, won't you? And may I sometimes come down to you in the morning for a practice? They haven't a piano at the farm. I've been reading up my French for the last week. Bonsoir, bonne amie, bonsoir!"

CHAPTER IV.

"Addie, where are you going?"

"Only up to the grove for a good long morning's study, auntie; don't wait for dinner for me if I'm not back at three. I have some bread and apple in my satchel."

"Why can't you study quietly in the house, like any other sensible girl?" says Aunt Jo querulously. "I never saw such children as you all are; you'd live like squirrels if you were allowed. People may say what they like about the grand Carlovingian dynasty of the Lefroys; it's my firm belief they're the descendants of Bedouins or gypsies—nothing else!"

"I couldn't study in the farm this morning, auntie dear," answers Addie, laughing; "there is such a heavy smell of cabbage-water and soap-suds all over the place; and then the baby, poor little dear, is teething, and not a very soothing companion. Will you tell Bob where I'm going, if he asks for me?"

It is a fortnight since Miss Lefroy confided her troubles to her old governess, and the first break in the family has taken place. Pauline is safely established at Greystones, and in ten days more Addie is to enter on her new duties as nursery-governess to the family of Mrs. Augustus Moggeridge Philpot, of Burlington Villa, Birmingham. That estimable lady, having been fascinated by Miss Rossitor's recommendation of her candidate, has accepted Addie's services without inconvenient questioning, and she is now busy storing her mind with knowledge, unencouraged by advice or assistance from her more experienced friend, who has gone to the seaside with her mother.

Addie stretches herself at full length on the scented sward, and honestly tries to occupy her powerful intellect solely with the dry pages of Noel and Chapsal, tries to banish the fleeting fancies of the summer hour and all the worries and sorrows crowding her life so heavily, tries—hardest task of all—to forget for the moment that this is her beloved Robert's last week on shore, that three days more will see him sailing down Channel with his sloppy cargo into the thundering Biscay waves.

"'Adjectives ending in x form their feminine in se—as, heureux, heureuse; jaloux, jalouse. But there are many exceptions to this rule—such as doux, douce; roux, rousse; faux, fausse.' Oh, dear me, what a language French is for exceptions! Poor Goggles was about right in her grumblings; it's a miserable language when you come to look into it," sighs Addie wearily. "I've had enough of it for one morning. I think I'll have a tussle now with the Tudors and those bothering Wars of the Roses. I wonder how long it will be before the Moggeridge Philpots—what an awful mouthful!—find me out! Not very long, I fear; and, after that, the Deluge!"

The drowsy hours creep by; Noel and Chapsal, Ince and Mangnall lie unheeded on the turf; crowds of ants, wood-lice, and earwigs are exploring their dry surfaces; Addie, her soft rosy cheek resting on a mossy bank, is fast asleep, dreaming that she is home again, helping old Sally to make gooseberry-jam in the big tiled kitchen, when an adventurous beetle, scampering sturdily across her nose, awakens her. She rises, yawning heavily, collects her property, and sets forth to refresh herself with a look at Nutsgrove. But the trees are too luxuriant in foliage; she walks up and down and stands on tiptoe without getting a glimpse of its brickwork. Near the high-road she comes to a stalwart tempting-looking oak, with giant blanches outstretched, inviting her into their waving shelter, promising her a delicious peep into the green dell they overhang. She climbs nimbly, firmly clutching her Mangnall, rests for a minute clinging to the trunk, and then, advancing cautiously out, balances herself most luxuriously on the swaying branch, an arm of which supports her back and shoulders in most obliging fashion.

"This is jolly, and no mistake!" she laughs delightedly, nibbling a wrinkled sapless apple. "If the aunt could see me now, there would be some sense in calling me a squirrel. How sweet and still the old place looks! Not a soul about hacking or hammering at anything to-day. I am in luck. Now to work steadily and conscientiously. 'For what was ancient Babylon famed?' Let me see—let me see. Oh, yes, I know! For its hanging gardens, lofty walls, and the luxurious effeminacy of its inhabitants. Hanging gardens! How funny! I wonder if they were as nice as mine! I wonder if ever a poor Babylonian girl came up and swung in one to have a peep at her dear lost home that she never—never—"

A sudden heavy swaying movement, an angry, cracking sound, and the next second, with a sounding thud, Miss Lefroy and her book are deposited side by side on the turf beneath.

"I think—I think I have broken something—something besides the branch," pants Addie, half-stunned with pain—"my—my ankle I suppose. Oh, oh, it is awful! I—I never felt anything like it before. Oh, what shall I do? I feel so queer—so faint—so—so—"

A cold perspiration breaks over her quivering face, she swerves from side to side, and then her head falls forward helplessly on the ground, on a line with her crippled foot.

How long she lies thus she does not know; but, after a time, she is dimly conscious of a man's arm raising her head, and forcing some strong spirit through her lips, which, after reviving her for a moment, sends her into a pleasant painless dream, from which she at last awakens to find herself lying on a soft couch, her foot firmly bandaged, a pile of cushions supporting her head, and a picture of a Dutch fishing-scene which hung between the drawing room windows at Nutsgrove facing her. She can not be mistaken; there is the same "soapsuddy" sea, the same fat grimy boat all over on one side, the same lovely gamboge sunset behind the distant pier, the same massive molded frame, only well dusted and regilt.

She glances round and quickly recognizes other friends of her childhood—an old Chippendale cupboard, a Louis Quatorze table, a tapestried screen, and a pair of large Dresden vases.

"Why, it is Nutsgrove! I am in the drawing-room!" she cries, rubbing her startled eyes. "The chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are different; but the room—the room is the same. What does it mean? Who brought me here?"

A buxom housekeeper who has been bandaging her foot answers at once,

"The master, Mr. Armstrong, brought you here, miss, in his dog-cart about twenty minutes ago. He saw you lying in a dead faint under a tree in the grove as he was driving home from Kelvick. I hope you feel better now; I bathed your foot in hot water according to his directions, and the swelling went down a good deal. The doctor will be here in a minute. Ah, here he is already!"

Dr. Newton, after a hurried inspection, says that the ankle is only slightly sprained, bandages it up again, orders an embrocation to be applied twice a day, and then speeds off to a dying patient.

"You are looking much better, Miss Lefroy; are you quite free from pain now?"

Addie turns with a start and finds the new master of Nutsgrove standing behind her.

He is a tall heavily-built man of about thirty-eight, keen-eyed, rugged-featured, with a dark strong face, the lower part of which is entirely concealed by a tawny brown beard hanging low on his broad chest. A decidedly powerful looking plebeian is Tom Armstrong of Kelvick.

"Thank you—almost," she answers, a little flurried by his massive incongruous appearance in that well-known room. "I feel quite restored now; and I have to thank you, Mr. Armstrong, very much for your prompt and kindly rescue."

"Pray don't mention it, Miss Lefroy; I was only too glad to have been of assistance to you. You quite startled me at first, you looked so still and white lying on the ground."

"I wish he'd sit down, or move away, or do something," thinks Addie impatiently; "he's so big, he oppresses me and spoils the room." Aloud she says, with a slightly nervous laugh, "I fell from the tree, you know, and broke your lovely branch. It was so—so funny! I had just been reading about the hanging gardens of—of—what's its name?"

"Babylon."

"Yes, Babylon—when down I came with such a thud! I suppose I must have fainted then, or something, though I can't understand how I did such a silly thing; it's the first time in my life it ever happened."

"You must have had a very heavy fall."

"Oh, but I've had much worse falls than that! I've come through trap doors in lofts no end of times. I crashed through a glass-house once and cut myself horribly. I've been bitten by dogs, had my hands squeezed in doors and wedged in machinery—all sorts of accidents, in fact—and I certainly never fainted after them. I'm sure I don't know what the boys will say when they hear of it." She stops suddenly, with an air of startled dignity, seeing the ghost of a smile hover round her host's bearded mouth. "But I am detaining you, Mr. Armstrong; pray—"

"You are not indeed, Miss Lefroy," he answers easily. "I am free from business in the afternoon. Would you not like me to send a message to your aunt to let her know where you are, as the doctor thinks it advisable that you should rest here for an hour before moving again?"

"It is not necessary, thank you. I told her I should probably not return until the evening, so she won't be uneasy. I'm very sorry to have to trespass so long on your hospitality," she says stiffly.

He waves aside the apology without comment.

"You must have found it very strange to awake and discover yourself in this room, Miss Lefroy. Did you know where you were at once?"

"Yes, and—no. It was such a surprise, I could not tell whether I was asleep or awake at first," she answers more naturally. "You—you have not changed the room so much, Mr. Armstrong; the tone of the paintings, of the carpet and curtains, is much as it was, and you have many of the old things too. That's mother's old screen by the fireplace, just as it always stood. She worked it when she was a girl at school. But that corner over there by the second window is quite different—where that jardinière stands, I mean. That used to be my special little parlor. I kept my old work-box there, papier-mâché desk, and two little padded baskets for Andrew Jackson and the Widow Malone."

"For whom?"

"My dog and cat; we had one each. I gave Andrew to Mr. Rossitor, but the poor Widow disappeared two days before the—the—auction, and I have never seen her since."

There is a short uncomfortable pause.

"You—you were fond of your old home, were you not, Miss Lefroy?" he asks presently.

The girl's gray eyes flash angrily, her cheeks deepen to a dusky glow; she answers not a word. He looks at her seriously, a little sadly, in no whit abashed by the eloquent rebuke of her silence. She glances at the clock and half rises.

"I—I really must be going now, Mr. Armstrong; my aunt will be getting uneasy, and my foot feels much better."

"Won't you at least wait to take a cup of tea, Miss Lefroy? The carriage is not round yet—let me persuade you."

She hesitates; her eyes fall on the tea-tray that is being brought that minute into the room, bearing most appetizing fare—a pile of hot-buttered toast, a jug of delicious cream, home-made plum-cake, a few dishes of fresh fruit resting on cool green leaves.

The servant lays his burden on a side-table, preparing to officiate, when he is interrupted by a shrill cry from Miss Lefroy.

"Our old Crown Derby set! Our dear old set! Oh, have you got it—have you really got it? Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Armstrong, let me pour out the tea; do—just for this once! I always did it—always since I was seven years old—and I never broke anything. Let me—do!"

Mr. Armstrong laughs outright at this impulsive appeal, at the eager, childish face and outstretched hands. He motions to the butler to bring the table to Miss Lefroy's couch. Blushing somewhat at the effect of her outburst, and heedless of medical advice, she struggles into an upright position and softly caresses the delicate surface of the sugar-basin.

"There was a chip on the lip of the cream-jug. Yes, it's there still. Hal did it when he was a baby. I see you've had a handle put on to this cup. How neatly it is done!" sighs Addie, discontentedly acknowledging to herself that even during his short tenancy the bachelor-master of Nutsgrove has made some marked efforts to remove the stains, rents, seams of their untidy reckless childhood, to purify his orderly household from all trace of their damaging footprints, as Bob said he would. What wonderful penetration, what knowledge of the world the dear boy had! Yes, all would come to pass as he had prophesied; a few years more and she would not know the old home again. This was her last glimpse, her farewell view; that handle to the cup was the beginning of the end, the key-note to the reign of paint, of varnish, of vandalic renovation and commercial "improvements" that were to wreck the home she loved.

But Addie does not linger long over these somber forebodings, for the urn is hissing at her elbow, and duty and instinct claim her undivided attention for the moment. In virtue of her twelve years' office she has arrived at a pitch of perfection in the art of tea-making which commands the family respect. Before the tea-pot she reigns supreme; no one ever questions her authority or presumes to criticise the quality of her brew, and her sarcastic information in reply to a request for a fourth cup—"Certainly; as long as there's water there's tea"—is always received in meek silence, from fear lest she, being a hot-tempered and ofttimes hopelessly huffy young person, might throw up office and leave the family at the mercy of either Pauline or Aunt Jo, both of whom have been tried and found dismally wanting during her temporary illnesses. She knows to a grain the quantity of sugar each member requires, to a drop the cream; she knows who likes "mustard," whose nerves and tender years exact "wash," who requires a sensible and palatable "go between."

Therefore, Addie unable to throw aside the patronizing attitude of years, more or less overcome by the beloved familiarity of her surroundings, rattles the enemy's rich-toned crockery with the same freedom and brisk importance as if she were handling Ellen Higgins's coarse "chaney" in the farm parlor.

"Do you take cream and sugar, Mr. Armstrong?"

"Cream and sugar," he repeats stupidly, as if half asleep—"cream and sugar? How? Where?"

"Where?" Addie answers, a touch of elder-sisterly impatience in her voice. "Where? In your tea, of course!"

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure. How dull I am! Yes, both, please."

This is the first time in his thirty-eight years of life that a lady has presided at Tom Armstrong's tea-board, and the strangeness of the circumstance has for the moment paralyzed his attention. He has had a motherless, sisterless, almost homeless childhood; no woman's gentle influence and refining contact have smoothed the rugged upward path that he has been climbing for more than a quarter of a century. In his springtide, when men's fancies are apt to "lightly turn to thoughts of love," he was too absorbed in prosaic business and ambitious dreams of wealth and power to have time for sweethearting like most young fellows of his age and position. He has never strolled down country lanes on soft Sabbath morns, his arm encircling the plump waist of some apple-cheeked Mary Jane or Susan Ann; he has never picnicked with her under scented hawthorn-hedges, or drunk tea with her, seasoned with shrimps and radishes, at rustic inns or in beer-tainted summer-houses. So to him the unusual position is unmarred by even shadow-clouds of dead joys and by-gone pleasures. Addie's fresh flower face awakes no ghost of fevered memory to taunt him with the sweets of lost youth.

"Here is your tea, Mr. Armstrong; you must tell me if it is right. I don't know your tastes yet."

"It is delicious," he answers slowly, while a sudden thought strikes his musing brain, flooding it with a stream of sunshine—a thought he has never entertained before. What a pleasant thing it would be to have a woman, a young, fresh-faced, gray-eyed woman like Miss Lefroy, to sit by his fireside every night and hand him his tea, just as she does that moment, with that quaint inimitable little air of business-like patronage, of half-matronly, half-childish, yet wholly graceful self-possession! Yes; how very pleasant it would be! He has a house now, a rapidly-growing estate—he has a position of unimpeached respectability, if not of aristocratic quality—he has a clear future, a clean past, a goodly name at his banker's—why should he not take a wife to himself at last, and create ties to dispel the gloom of coming age—a wife just like Addie Lefroy—who would grace his hearth as she does, who would refine and enliven with her graceful youth the atmosphere of the heavily-draped room, which already he has begun to find so still and wearisome after the bustling life outside his den at the factory in Kelvick?

A wife just like Addie Lefroy—not one whit more elegant, more beautiful, more fascinating, but just as she is—soft-faced, irregular-featured, simple-mannered, gentle-voiced, yet with a suggestion of hot-breathed, breezy youth about her every movement, her every gesture. Yes; if ever he marries, it will be some one like her, very like her—her exact counterpart, in fact; and where is he to find that? That is the question. Rapidly, while he sips his tea, he runs his eye, as he would down a stiff column of figures, over the many eligible young ladies whose acquaintance he owns in his native town; but none of them suits his prejudiced eye. One is too handsome, another too tall, another too fashionable, another too affected—all of them are everything that is not Addie Lefroy. Addie Lefroy, Addie Lefroy! Softly he repeats her name again and again, as if the words themselves tickle his palate and season his tea pleasantly, fragrantly. Addie Lefroy! How the name suits her! It has a sort of liquid, swinging sound. If ever she changes it, will she get another to suit her as well? For instance, Addie—Addie—Arm—

With a start he "pulls himself together," and swallows a big lump of cake that he loathes, which he hopes will act as a sort of break in the dangerous current of his imagination.

Meanwhile Miss Addie, quite unconscious of the agreeable turmoil that her presence is awaking in the breast of her massive middle-aged host, sips her tea and munches cake in blissful unconcern.

"I suppose," she muses, with a little ruefulness, "if the boys and Polly knew, they would think it awfully mean of me, feeding on the enemy like this; but—but—I really can not help it—I'm half famished. Perhaps, if they hadn't eaten anything from seven A.M. until five P.M. but half a moldy apple, they wouldn't be so particular. I don't know about Bob, though; I think his pride would stomach a longer fast than that. I don't believe any strait of body would induce him to eat a crumb under this roof now—and yet Mr. Armstrong hasn't behaved so badly. I might have been lying in the wood but for him. Oh, dear, how horrible! I've actually cleared the whole plate of toast alone! I—I hope he won't notice; I'll shove the dish behind the urn. Yes; he can't see it there. How did I do it? I never felt myself eating. That cake is delicious too—better than any of Sally's. I feel so much better now; I suppose it must have been hunger that helped me to go off in that ridiculous fashion in the grove."

Her head sinks back pleasantly on the soft cushions; she looks out on the sunny lawn and the timbered wealth she knows so well. Both the windows are wide open, and a faint evening breeze brings to her couch a breath of mignonette from a parterre outside, which her mother laid out with her own hands when she came to Nutsgrove, a happy bride, twenty-two years before. A thrush that has yearly built his nest in the heart of the gloire de Dijon, the shining leaves of which are fluttering against the casement, bursts into song. Addie closes her eyes, and she is at home once more, living over again the sweet spring evenings of her blissful neglected youth. Armstrong of Kelvick and his trim purified apartments vanish into space; the notched and rickety chairs are back again, the threadbare carpet with its sprays of dim ghostly terns, the dusky curtains. Her work-box is standing in its old place, she hears Pauline's light footsteps flying down the stairs, the boys are calling the dogs

"With wild halloo and brutal noise"

away to "marshy joys" in the grove, and old Sally is hunting the chickens out of the kitchen with a peculiar hooting noise that no throat but her own can produce.

"Miss Lefroy, you have not answered my question yet. You were very fond of Nutsgrove, were you not?"

She starts up, an angry crimson dyeing her face, to find her host leaning forward, his keen hazel eyes fixed intently on hers. She answers vehemently, passionately—

"No, I did not answer you, because I thought it was a senseless question; but I will answer you now, if you insist. Were we fond of Nutsgrove? We were—we were—we were! Will that satisfy you? What else had we to be fond of? We had no father, no mother, no friends, no outside amusements or pleasures, and we wanted nothing—nothing but to be left here together. We were content—oh, yes! Even—even when Polly and I began to grow up, we never longed to go away to London or Paris, to fashionable places, or balls and parties, like other girls; and the boys—they never asked to go to school or foreign parts, never wanted to see the world, like other boys. The woods, the river, the gardens, the dear old farm-yard, gave us all we wanted the whole year round—summer, winter, autumn, spring. Fond of Nutsgrove? Ah, we were! We loved every blade of grass, every mossy stone, every clump of earth; every flower and every leaf of the trees was dearer to us than they can be to you if you live here half a century. Now you are answered, Mr. Armstrong, and very rudely and impertinently too; but—but I could not help myself. I—I am very hot-tempered, and you should not have persisted when you saw—when you saw—"

"I know, I know," he interrupts earnestly; "but, believe me, Miss Lefroy, I did not persist out of idle curiosity or for the purpose of giving you wanton pain. Will you bear with me yet a little longer, and permit me to ask you another question, which—which may appear to you even more impertinent than the first? I have a purpose—an extenuating purpose in both. You are leaving this house very soon, are you not, to become a governess—a nursery-governess if I have heard aright—in a family of inferior position, and at a salary so mean as to exclude the idea of helping your family, who are—are almost completely unprovided for, thrown on the world without any visible means of support? Is my information correct?"

"Your information is perfectly correct, Mr. Armstrong," Addie retorts, springing to her feet, her eyes blazing; "but I fail to see your object in forcing me to discuss such—"

With a gesture he silences her, motioning her back to her seat almost impatiently.

"A moment more, if you please; then I shall have done. On your own admission, therefore, I may conclude that your future prospects, both personally and collectively, are not, to put it mildly, in a flourishing condition, and that at present you see no glimmer of improvement, no chance of reprieve from a life of servile drudgery, for which you feel yourself totally unfitted, first of all from a strong distaste to teaching, and secondly from the unconventional nature of your early life and education."

She is too amazed to resent even by a gesture this extraordinary speech. After a slight pause, he resumes, in the same low mechanical voice, with a faint tinge of color in his swarthy cheek:

"Therefore, I presume to ask you, Miss Lefroy, if in these circumstances you would deem it any improvement to your condition to—to—marry me and live out your life at Nutsgrove?"

She looks at him with eyes wide open, staring stupidly, and blank white face.

"To—to marry you? I—I don't understand. Are you joking, Mr. Armstrong?"

"No, Miss Lefroy, I am not joking; on the contrary, I am very much in earnest. Men mostly are, I believe, when they ask a woman to be their wife."

"You ask me to—to be your wife?"

"Yes, I most assuredly do. If you consent, I will settle this place on you unreservedly, so that, whatever happens to me, nobody will be able to oust you from it again. Nutsgrove will belong to you, you alone, as virtually as it belonged to your grandfather sixty years ago, before an acre was mortgaged. Will you marry me, Miss Lefroy? Is the bribe sufficient?" he asks sharply.

But poor Addie has no power to answer; she sits gazing into the frowning, flushed face of her suitor with the same blank expression, without a tinge of shyness, hesitation, or embarrassment in her attitude, or flicker of color in her cheek. Armstrong feels as if he would like to shake her.

"She looks at me as if I were not human, as if I were some strange animal escaped from a menagerie. She's a woman, I'm a man; why should I not ask her to marry me?" he thinks. "Well," he says aloud, with an irritation he strives in vain to repress, "have you understood my question, Miss Lefroy? Must I repeat it? No? Then will you kindly put me out of pain—that is the correct term, I believe—as soon as you can?"

"Oh!" pants Addie, waving her hands nervously, as if pushing him from her. "Can't you give me a moment to breathe—to feel—to understand?"

"Certainly, if you wish it."

He walks to the window, steps out, and paces up and down the terrace, smoking furiously.

Addie, left to herself, heaves a great sigh of relief, then glances languidly round the room, and tries to realize her situation, to understand that she can be mistress of the old place again, that she need never yawn the dreary hours away in the Moggeridge school-room, need never darn alien socks, help to tub peevish babies, never bow her haughty young head to the yoke of uncongenial servitude, but spend her days by the familiar fireside, rambling through the leafy grove and mellow orchards, her own, her very own forever. A flood of sunshine bathes the park in flickering glory; every leaf trembling with the pulse of coming summer, every bird singing in the budding grove, every gurgling ripple of the stream that feeds the marshy pond behind the park, seems to whisper to the girl's troubled heart words of welcome and entreaty, seems to sing in gladsome chorus, "Come back, Addie, come back, come back; we miss you sorely!" At that moment a shadow falls across her path, the song of the birds dies into a wordless twitter, the glory of the evening fades, as the burly, massive form of the vitriol-manufacturer stands between her and the sunset.

"To live with him alone here!" she thinks, with a shudder, while the hot blood dyes her face and neck. "Oh, I couldn't—I couldn't! He would spoil everything; he would take the beauty, the poetry out of everything I love. I couldn't—I couldn't! Nobody would expect it of me. The bribe is big, but not sufficient—not sufficient, unless—unless—Oh, I wish I knew what to do—what to say to him! If he would let me be his gover—I mean his housekeeper, his dairy-maid—anything—anything but his—his—wife! Oh, dear, dear, what put it into his head? What made him think of such a thing? He never even looked at me when he came to the farm; and now he wants to marry me. He is a strange man; when he turns to me with that stern straight look in his eyes, I feel—I feel as if I didn't belong to myself, as if I had no power over my life. Ellen Higgins says that he always gets everything he wants, that every one gives in to him sooner or later in Kelvick—nice prospect for me! And the flowers told me last autumn that I was to marry a gentleman—a gentleman they told me over and over again—a gentleman!"