cal
consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my
wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world I care for so
much.'

She said something about there being far better women than she, and other
natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for
feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was. However, Selina would
not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home--at any
rate just then. He went away, after taking tea with her, without
discerning much hope for him in her good-bye.

VI

After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.
Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued,
whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must have known, she
thought, of this custom of hers. But though the churchyard was not
nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he
never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.

An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother,
who casually mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the
other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's
daughter that he knew there. His chief motive, it was reported, had been
less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his aged mother.

Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and possibly
the only opportunity of settling in life after what had happened, and for
a moment she regretted her independence. But she became calm on
reflection, and to fortify herself in her course started that afternoon
to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which she took the same sober
pleasure as at first.

On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as
usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a
respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark's
turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that
Selina had reverently planted there to form an evergreen mantle over the
mound.

'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward so
excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she
gave his hand in her sudden start.

'Your ivy?' said the respectable woman.

'Why yes! I planted it there--on my husband's grave.'

'Your husband's!'

'Yes. The late Sergeant-Major Clark. Anyhow, as good as my husba