by her simple belief in the production of a desirable tenant at a moment's notice.

He laughed a little. "It will take a little time, Mrs. Dorriman, to get just the person you want; some weeks at any rate. A step like this cannot be taken in a hurry—you yourself will require time."

"Yes, if I can get it," she rejoined, speaking her thought aloud.

"Come and have some luncheon with my wife," he said kindly; "she will make you welcome, I know."

Mrs. Dorriman accepted the proffered kindness, and followed him into the comfortable room where Mrs. Macfarlane was found with five children; who were introduced and dismissed in a breath.

Mrs. Macfarlane was one of those pleasant cheerful kindly women who see the sunny side of life most. She had been a petted daughter, was an idolized wife, and an adored mother. Her husband carried all his perplexities and all his troubles to her, and by so doing lightened them. She had a keen, shrewd way of looking at things, and was so wrapt up in her husband and children that she had no time for outside friendships. Her chief fault (as imperfection in some shape is but human) was her intolerance of imaginary woes, and want of reality in any and every shape.

She thought life was made so unnecessarily hard, not by real circumstances, but by the way those circumstances were dealt with.

She saw no hardship, where health and strength existed, in self-denial for those who were loved. She was completely out of sympathy with people who suffered acutely from what they falsely considered a loss of dignity. She had seven children, a very moderate income, and two servants. If those servants were busy or out, or hard at work, she opened her own front door and saw no harm in it; just as on Sunday she took the milk in when her servants were in church. To say that she had arrived at doing this without some trouble would be untrue, because all her neighbours thought her dreadfully wanting in that high standard of gentility that was their own.

But no woman is consistent without having a certain power and influence amongst her fellows. She had splendid health, and her powers of repartee were so well known that no one cared to lay themselves open to an answer—her absence of ill-health giving her a command of temper that always placed her in an advantageous position.

She was extremely sorry for Mrs. Dorriman: to be alone as she was, to have to face the world without any backbone (which was her way of putting it) was to her, like expecting a fish to swim deprived of its fins.

Nothing more gracious, more kindly, can be conceived than her manner to the poor lady who so required it, and one slight effect of her influence was amusing enough. Instead of leaving the bank and going to fetch the pony-carriage, Mrs. Dorriman boldly sent for it to come and take her up there.

CHAPTER II.

Mrs. Dorriman drove home, well wrapped-up, and in a glow of feeling which would have been difficult to analyse. To one who is, as a rule, in an undecided state of mind, the very fact of having come to a decision is a comfortable feeling: besides this, there had been friendliness and kindness just at the moment the poor woman had been sorely needing both—and, though directly opposed to poetical ideas, it may here be surely confessed that excellent food—daintily set before her, and proffered with that true hospitality which nowhere is more real than in Scotland, and was conspicuous in Mrs. Macfarlane—had its share.

Then the support a cheerful, honest, and direct person (above all petty prejudices, and seeing facts disentangled from all complications) is capable of giving, had a most beneficial influence. Mrs. Dorriman's character had suffered in a long and weary contest against petty tyranny—just as a tender sapling may live and grow exposed to adverse and cruel winds, but it will be bent, and twisted, and gnarled, and finally grow stunted and fixed in one direction—an existing proof of the severity to which it was exposed when too young to stand against it.

A child, motherless, and with an invalid father, she had been unwelcome; the half-brother, who was so many years her senior, had asserted his authority harshly over and over again. She had been taught something, in odd ways, as representations from outsiders had been made, and she had learned some lessons not intended to be taught her. By nature anything but strong, she was timid and nervous, shrinking from every one, expecting roughness, repressed and taking refuge by her father's paralysed form as the one place where she could hear no reproaches. She dared make no friends, and she did not distinguish between those she might have made, and those she had better not make. No servant stayed long enough to befriend the child, and her earliest recollection was the departure of her nurse, who having, upon one occasion, got certain dainties for her, and being met by John Sandford, had been dismissed on the spot, as a thief. Mrs. Dorriman could yet remember how she had shivered in the cold nursery that night, and how helplessly she had tried to undress herself; and how, when all was quiet, a kind-hearted rough dairymaid had brought her a bowl of milk and a hunch of bread—and how wretched it had all been since then, when it was no one's business to look after her, and how she had been indebted to one or another servant (as they had tried) to do anything for her. Then a rough school, where no one seemed to care about her and where she was in perpetual disgrace for not knowing lessons she could not even read; the discovery of her appalling ignorance and the mortification of having as a child of nine to stand by little ones of five and learn as they did; the scanty provision sent for her clothes, whose very patches she vividly remembered—a harder nature would have soured for life. Mrs. Dorriman grew up with all the spirit crushed out of her, but she was not hardened. She had no holidays; she was left year after year there till she was seventeen. Then a gleam of joy broke into her life, for she was suddenly summoned home—by her father's wish—and she had arrived to find that he had made a rally, and that John Sandford was not there.

Her father could barely speak, even inarticulately. She yet could recall his wondering touch upon her shabby gown, and how, almost as in a fairy-tale, she had suddenly found herself in possession of much she had never dreamed of having.

His one happiness seemed to be to see her, and to have her near him. A few months passed like this—very few. She had arrived poorly clad, and suffering from the acute cold and bitter wind, in late autumn; when the snowdrops were still blooming, and the earliest trees were yet in bud, he died suddenly; giving her just before his death a little case in which she saw a lovelier fairer likeness of herself—her mother.

She had loved him with all the love that had never before had an outlet. The days that followed were like a painful dream. What she had, what her position was—of all this she knew absolutely nothing. The one thing she clung to was the old grey house, with the great beech and plane trees, and silver firs, up which the squirrels (imps of mischief though they are) ran so gracefully. The sea—the friend of all, giving society and music to the desolate, and rejoicing the hearts of those who are lighthearted enough to enjoy its sparkling moods—that sea was now her friend. To wander in the wood and look down upon it; to let its salt spray touch her face as it broke upon the rocks.—She loved it in every mood, and found there something of the comfort which the absence of any intimate religion deprived her of, the bald learning of a few verses, the chapters read in the morning in a dull tone by a shivering teacher in the fireless schoolroom; where, from motives of economy, the fire (generally kindled with damp sticks, and which hardly ever did anything but smoke) was never even allowed to have a match put to it till the girls were all assembled there.

This had been her