'eathen. A broom is a carriage, a close carriage, something like a four-wheel cab, only better. Oh, dear, dear! and we keep three, do we? Oh, what a joke to tell Stubbs!"

"Miss Sarah knows," struck in the old nurse, with some indignation; "the doctor's carriage is what Mrs. Stubbs calls a broom, dearie."

Sarah turned her crimson face from one to the other. "But Father always called that kind of carriage a bro-am," she emphasized, "and I didn't know you meant the same, Aunt."

"Well, never mind, my dear; I shouldn't 'ave laughed at you," returned Mrs. Stubbs, stirring her tea again with fat complaisance. "Little folks can't be expected to know everything, though there are some as does expect it, and most unreasonable it is of 'em. Only, Sarah, it's more stylish to say broom, so try to think of it, there's a good girl."

"I'll try," said Sarah, hoping that she had somewhat retrieved her character by knowing what kind of carriage her aunt meant by a "broom."

Then Mrs. Stubbs had another cup of tea, which she seemed to enjoy particularly.

"And you would like to go upstairs, mum?" said the nurse, as she set the cup down.

"Why, yes, nurse, it's my duty to go, and I'm not one as is ever backward in doing 'er duty," Mrs. Stubbs replied, upheaving herself from the somewhat uncertain depths of the big chair, the only easy chair in the house.

So the two women went up above together to visit that something which Sarah had not seen since the moment of death.

She sat just where they left her--a way she had, for Sarah was a very quiet child--wondering how life would be with this new-found aunt of hers. She was very kind, Sarah decided, and would be very good to her, she knew; and yet--yet--there was something about her from which she shrank instinctively--something she knew would have offended her father beyond everything.

Poor Sarah! At that moment Mrs. Stubbs was standing beside all that was left of him that had loved her so dearly during all the years of her short life.

"Pore thing!" she was saying. "Pore thing! We weren't good friends, nurse, but we must not think of that now; and I'll be a mother to his little girl just as if there'd never been a cloud between us. Pore thing, only thirty-six! Ah, well, pore thing; but he makes a pretty corpse!"

"Pore thing!" she was saying. "Pore thing!"

CHAPTER III

SARAH'S FUTURE IS ARRANGED

Two days later Sarah's father was buried, laid quietly away in a pretty little churchyard two miles outside the town, beside the young wife who had died nine years before.

The funeral was a very unostentatious affair; only one cab followed the coffin, and contained Sarah and Mrs. Stubbs, the old nurse, and Jane, the untidy little maid, who, after the manner of her sort, wept and sobbed and choked, until Mrs. Stubbs would right willingly have given her a good shaking.

Sarah was very subdued and quiet, and Mrs. Stubbs cried a little, and would have cried more had she not been so taken up with keeping an eye on "that stupid ninny Jane."

And then they went back to the little hot, stuffy house, and had a cup of tea, after which the vicar of the parish called and had a long talk with Mrs. Stubbs about Sarah's future.

"I can't say we was good friends with him, pore thing," Mrs. Stubbs explained; "but when death comes between, little differences should be forgotten. And Stubbs and me will forget all our differences now; it's Stubbs' wish as well as mine. I believe in sticking to your own flesh and blood, for if your own won't, whose can you expect to do it? So Sarah and me is the best of friends, and she is going back with me to share and share alike with my own children."

"Oh, you are going to take Sarah," said the vicar, who had felt a great interest in the dreamy artist whom they had just left to his last long rest in the quiet country churchyard; "that is very good of you, very good of you. I have been wondering what would become of the poor little woman."

"Why, what should become of her?" Mrs. Stubbs said indignantly. "Her mother was Stubbs' own sister."

"Yes," said the vicar, smiling; "but it is not every lady who would at all encourage the idea of bringing up a child because her mother happened to be her husband's sister."

"You're right there, Mr. Moore; you are right," Mrs. Stubbs cried; "but some women 'ave 'earts of stone instead of flesh and blood. I'm not one of that sort."

"And about the furniture, and so on," the vicar broke in, having heard Mrs. Stubbs's remarks about her own good qualities several times already.

Mrs. Stubbs looked round the room in good-natured contempt. "There's nothing to speak of," she answered--and she was right enough--"but what there is 'll have to go to paying for the doctor and the undertaker. If there's a few pounds left over, Stubbs says put it into the savings bank and let the child 'ave it when she grows up. She'll want to buy a ring or something to remember her father by."

"And you are going to take the sole charge and expense of her?" the vicar exclaimed.

"Oh, yes. We've seven of our own, and when you've so many, one more or less makes very little difference. But I wanted to ask you something else, Mr. Moore, and I'll ask it before it slips my memory. You know Mr. Gray--'e's gone now, pore thing, and I don't wish to say aught against him--brought Sarah up in a very strange way; indeed, as I said at the time to the nurse, it's quite 'eathenish; and, it you'll believe me, sir, she didn't even know how many aunts and uncles she 'ad, nor what our very names were. But he 'as taught her some things, and playing the fiddle is one."

"Yes, Sarah plays the violin remarkably well for her age," said the vicar promptly.

"Yes, so the old nurse says," returned Mrs. Stubbs, with an air of melancholy. "But I don't altogether 'old with it myself; it seems to me such an outlandish thing for a little girl to play on. I wish it had been the piano or the 'arp! There's so much more style about them."

"The violin is the most fashionable instrument a lady can learn just now, Mrs. Stubbs," put in the clergyman hastily, wishing to secure Sarah the free use of her beloved violin, if it were possible.

"Dear me. You don't say so. What, are young ladies about 'ere learning it?" Mrs. Stubbs asked, with interest.

"Yes. I was dining at Lord Allington's last week, and in the evening one of his daughters played a violin solo; but she