for me. I call it real unkind."

"It is only ten o'clock, you know--far too early an hour for calling."

"You are so particular! Just like an old woman--and a stiff old-country woman, too--Miss Penelope all over."

"I hope so. Aunt Penelope is always right."

"Come in now, anyway, and take off your things. I am dying for somebody to talk to, after sitting round the stove for three days with three old women. What with Mr. Selby's bandages, and embrocations, and Miss Susan's neuralgia, and Mrs. Selby's poor health, this house is worse than a hospital. Auntie likes it first-rate; she enjoys giving people physic, and says it was a Providence which brought her here at this time; but I find it real lonesome. I have read through the only two novels I can find, and I declare my back aches with sitting still and doing nothing. Couldn't we go down town by-and-by and look at the shops? Let me help you off with your jacket. Fur-lined, I do declare! Cost twenty dollars, I dare say. Thirty was it? You're the lucky girl! Never mind fixing up before the glass, you're all right--here's a pin if you want one. Wherever did you pick up that cunning neck-ribbon?--lady bugs and grasshoppers--I call it sweet. It would just suit my geranium-coloured poplin! By-the-way, do you think that will do for evening wear, if I am asked anywhere? It is made with a tablier--looked scrumptious the night they gave charades at Madame Podevin's boarding-house. Mdlle. Ciseau cut it out for me, and I run it on the machine myself--fits like a glove. But your city fashions are so different, one never can be sure. We will go upstairs and look at it; but first you must come into the Snuggery and see the old ladies."

The "Snuggery" was at the back of the house, a sort of family room in which strangers were not received. It had been the chief apartment of the old log homestead which preceded the existing dwelling. The logs had been found so sound and the chamber so desirable that it had been suffered to remain, and been incorporated with the "frame" building erected in front, which it promised to survive, and last on in solid stability when the lighter structure of posts and boards should have fallen to pieces. It was cooler than the rest of the house in warm weather, and warmer in cold; built of twelve inch logs carefully jointed together, plastered on the outside, panelled and ceiled within with red pine highly varnished, and floored with parquetry of different native woods. It had a window on each of three sides, flanked by heavy curtains. There was no fire-place, but in the centre an old-fashioned box-stove, capable of holding billets from two to three feet long, and whose great black smoke-pipe pierced the roof like a pivot for the family life to revolve on.

A bear skin and rugs lay about the floor, sofas and tables stood by the walls, and round the domestic altar, the blazing stove, were the rocking-chairs of the three sisters, gently oscillating like pendulums in a clockmaker's shop, and making the wooden chamber feel like the cabin of a ship, heaving and swinging on a restless tide.

Muriel was greeted effusively by Mrs. Bunce, who looked more fidgety and alert than ever in that reposeful place, and then she was presented to the sisters. Miss Susan, swathed in quilted silk and webs of knitting, a bundle rather than a person, and immersed in her own misery far too deeply to feel or to excite interest in a stranger, merely bowed and shuddered at the breath of cooler air which entered from without; but to the other, Mrs. Selby, Muriel felt strongly drawn, and pleased in a strange and restful way to feel the gentle eyes of the sick and rather silent lady dwelling on her with wistful kindness. She was tall and pale, and in the cross light of windows admitting the dazzling reflections from the snow, and among the browns and yellows of the wainscoting, there was a lambent whiteness which associated itself in Muriel's mind with those "shining ones" she had read of when a child in the "Pilgrim's Progress," and filled her with pleasant reverence.

The lady scarcely spoke, spoke only the necessary words of welcome to a stranger, and then withdrew from the hurry of Betsey's and Judith's eager talk, sitting silently by and looking on the new comer with gentle earnest eyes. In the focus of streaming daylight and backed by russet shadows she sat and looked, wrapped in her white knitted shawl, and with hair like frosted silver, features and hands delicate, transparent, and colourless like wax, and eyes which had the weary faded look which comes of sleepless nights and many tears. She found it pleasant to sit and rest her eyes on Muriel, so elastic and freshly bright, as she chatted with the others; she felt as when a breath of spring comes rustling through the dead and wintry woods, through sapless withered twigs and fallen leaves, whispering of good to come, and sweet with springing grass and opening buds.

She scanned the girl's face and guessed her age, and then her thoughts went back across the years, the weary sunless years which had come and gone since her joys had withered, and she could not but think that had her own lost daughter been spared, she would have been nearly of that age now, and perhaps she would have been gay and bright and sweet as this one was before her. Her eyes grew moist, but it was with a softer, less harrowing regret than she had hitherto known, more plaintive and almost soothing in its sadness. The girl looked so innocent and free of care, with low sweet laughter coming from a heart that had never known sorrow or unkindness. It did her good to watch, and made her feel more patient in her long and weary grief.

For the others, they had their own affairs to make busy with, and it was not every day they came to town. What interest, either, for them, could there be in the emotional variations of their silent and always sorrowful hostess? She had suffered--though it was fourteen years since then--and of course they "felt" for her; but there is a limit to sympathy as to all things human--if there were not, life would be unbearable--and to see her after so many years still cherishing the olden sorrow had grown tedious, if yet touching after a sort, and the family had grown to disregard it as a settled melancholy or monomania, to be pitied and passed over, like the deafness, old age, or palsy of family friends. So Betsey and her aunt had settled themselves one on either side of Muriel "for a good old talk," as Betsey said, and they talked accordingly.

"I shall come round to-morrow morning to see your aunts," said Mrs. Bunce, "and spend a long forenoon with them," and so on ad infinitum.

A letter was brought in while the talk was in full swing.

"An invitation!" cried Judith. "Mrs. Jordan--requests the pleasure--a juvenile party. Well--I declare!--Betsey, we forgot to bring your pinafores--or should it have been a certificate of the date of your birth? A very strange way to pay attention to their rector's wife and niece! I thought Mrs. Jordan would have known better."

"Aunt Matilda and I are going," said Muriel in astonishment. "It was very nice last time. More than a hundred, big and little. They had the band, a splendid supper and lots of fun. Indeed, Aunt Penelope was almost unwilling I should go this time; it was so late when we got home."

"Very proper, my dear; I quite approve. Young people should keep early hours; but, you know, Betsey is a little older than you are. Not much," she added, as prudence pointed to the day, only a year or two ahead, when it would suit Betsey, if still a young lady, to be no older than Muriel--"still she is in long dresses, and it seems odd to invite her the first time to a child's party."

"They are not all children. Tilly Martindale, for instance, is as old as Betsey. So is Randolph Jordan