ible little Shetland.

The pale cheeks which helped to make Charlie so dear to his aunt began
to show something of a healthy color before the end of May, and
Katherine sometimes laughed to find herself boasting of Cecil's parts
and progress to Miss Payne. But the metamorphosis wrought by the young
magicians in this important personage was the most remarkable of the
effects they produced. Had Miss Liddell been less pleasant and
profitable, it is doubtful if Miss Payne would have consented to allow
children--boys--to desecrate the precincts of her spotless dwelling;
they were in her estimation extremely objectionable. Katherine was,
however, a prime favorite; she had touched Miss Payne as none of her
former inmates ever did.

Years of battling with the world had coated her heart with a tolerably
hard husk; but there was a heart beneath the stony sheath, and by some
occult sympathy Katherine had pierced to the hidden fount of feeling,
and her chaperon found there was more flavor and warmth in life than she
once thought.

When, therefore, she had completed her business in London and was
settled at Cliff Cottage, she was surprised to find that the boys did
_not_ worry her; nay, when they came racing to meet her in wild delight
to show a tangled dripping mass of shells and sea-weed which they had
collected in their wading, scrambling wanderings on the shore and among
the rocks, she found herself unbending, almost involuntarily, and
examining their treasures with unfeigned interest. Then Cecil's very
fluent descriptions of his experiences at school, his escapades, his
torn garments, the occasional quarrels between the two boys, their
appropriation of Francois, and their breakages--all seemed to grow
natural and pardonable when the young culprits ran to take her by the
hand, and looked in her face with their innocent, trusting eyes. On the
whole, Miss Payne had never been so happy before, and Katherine forgot
the shifting sands on which she was uprearing the graceful fabric of her
tranquil life.

Sometimes they lured Bertie to spend a couple of days with them--days
which were always marked with a white stone. What arguments and rambles
Katherine enjoyed with him, and what goodly checks she drew to further
his numerous undertakings!

De Burgh did not fail to carry out his threat of inspecting Sandbourne.
He found a valid excuse in a commission from Colonel Ormonde to advise
Miss Liddell respecting a pair of ponies she had