.

"_Your_ dog," she says to Clarissa, "and such a pet. He has eaten
several legs off the tables, and all my fingers. His appetite is a
credit to him. How do you provide for him at Gowran? Do you have an
ox roasted whole occasionally, for his special benefit?"

"Oh, he is a worry," says Clarissa, penitently. "Billy, come here, you
little reprobate, and don't try to look as if you never did anything
bad in your life. Cissy, I wish you and Georgie and the children would
all come up to Gowran to-morrow."

"We begin lessons to-morrow," says the new governess, gravely, who
looks always so utterly and absurdly unlike a governess, or anything
but a baby or a water-pixie, with her yellow hair and her gentian
eyes. "It will be impossible for me to go."

"But lessons will be over at two o'clock," says Cissy, who likes going
to Gowran, and regards Clarissa as "a thing of beauty." "Why not walk
up afterwards?"

"I shall expect you," says Clarissa, with decision; and then the two
girls tell her they will go with her as far as the vicarage gate, as
she must now go home.

There she bids them good-by, and, passing through the gate, goes up
the road. Compelled to look back once again, by some power we all know
at times, she sees Georgie's small pale face pressed against the iron
bars, gazing after her, with eyes full of lonely longing.

"Good-by, Clarissa," she says, a little sad imploring cadence
desolating her voice.

"Until to-morrow" replies Clarissa, with an attempt at gayety, though
in reality the child's mournful face is oppressing her. Then she
touches the ponies lightly, and disappears up the road and round the
corner, with Bill, as preternaturally grave as usual, sitting bolt
upright beside her.

The next morning is soft and warm, and, indeed, almost sultry for the
time of year. Thin misty clouds, white and shadowy, enwrap the fields
and barren ghost-like trees and sweep across the distant hills. There
is a sound as of coming rain,--a rushing and a rustling in the naked
woods. "A still wild music is abroad," as though a storm is impending,
that shall rise at night and shake the land the more fiercely because
of its enforced silence all this day.

"But now, at noon,
Upon the southern side of the slant hill,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue,
Without a cloud: and white without a speck,