it possible that this is the rather pale
young girl in black, who gave me change from behind the desk of Mr
Candy's Information Shop? I don't believe it. That young person sprang
up, temporarily, and is defunct. This is some one else."

She read three chapters before she considered it time to go into the
house to see if it was necessary for her to do anything about dinner.
When she left him, Lawrence turned again to his writing.

That afternoon, he sent Mrs Null a little note on the back of a card,
asking her if she could let him have a few more sheets of paper.
Lawrence found this request necessary, as he had used up that day
all the paper she had sent him, and the small torn pieces of it now
littered the fireplace.

"He must be writing a diary letter," said Miss Annie to herself when,
she received this message, "such as we girls used to write when we
were at school." And, bringing down a little the corners of her mouth,
she took from her stationery box what she thought would be quite paper
enough to send to a man for such a purpose.

But, although the means were thus made abundant, the letter to Miss
March was not then written. Lawrence finally determined that it was
simply impossible for him to write to the lady, until he knew more.
What Keswick had told him had been absurdly little, and he had hurried
away before there had been time to ask further questions. Instead of
sending a letter to Miss March, he would write to Keswick, and would
put to him a series of interrogations, the answers to which would make
him understand better the position in which he stood. Then he would
write to Miss March.

The next day Miss Annie could not read to him in the morning, because,
as she came and told him, she was going to Howlett's, on an errand for
her aunt. But there would be time to give him a chapter or two before
dinner, when she came back.

"Would it be any trouble," said Lawrence, "for you to mail a letter
for me?"

"Oh, no," said Miss Annie, but not precisely in the same tone in which
she would have told him that it would be no trouble to read to him two
or three chapters of a novel. And yet she would pass directly by the
residence of Miss Harriet Corvey, the post-mistress.

As Miss Annie walked along the narrow path which ran by the roadside
to Howlett's, with the blue sky above her, and the pleasant October
sunshine all about her, and followed at a little distance by the boy
Plez, carrying a basket, she did not