lds
when he was alive, but we had a nice garden, with plum trees, and rose
bushes and gillyflowers----"

"Better and better," murmured Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the
image of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine was more
pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry
steps. "What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried
aloud, surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, and what
else did you do?"

Mary Ann opened her lips. It was delightful to see how the dull veil,
as of London fog, had been lifted from her face; her eyes sparkled.

Then, "Oh, there's the ground-floor bell," she cried, moving
instinctively towards the door.

"Nonsense: I hear no bell," said Lancelot.

"I told you I always _hear_ it," said Mary Ann, hesitating and blushing
delicately before the critical word.

"Oh well, run along then. Stop a moment--I must give you another kiss
for talking so nicely. There! And--stop a moment--bring me up some
coffee, please, when the ground floor is satisfied."

"Eessir--I mean yessir. What must I say?" she added, pausing troubled
on the threshold.

"Say, 'Yes, Lancelot,'" he answered recklessly.

"Yessir," and Mary Ann disappeared.

It was ten endless minutes before she reappeared with the coffee. The
whole of the second five minutes Lancelot paced his room feverishly,
cursing the ground floor, and stamping as if to bring down its ceiling.
He was curious to know more of Mary Ann's history.

But it proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a
child; her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were
found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be
taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the
eldest sister of a young woman who had nursed the vicar's wife. Mrs.
Leadbatter had promised the vicar to train up the girl in the way a
domestic should go.

"And when I am old enough she is going to pay me wages as well,"
concluded Mary Ann, with an air of importance.

"Indeed--how old were you when you left the village?"

"Fourteen."

"And how old are you now?"

Mary Ann looked confused. "I don't quite know," she murmured.

"O come," said Lancelot laughingly; "is this your country simplicity?
You're quite young enough to tell how old you are."

The tears came into Mary Ann's eyes.

"I can't, Mr. Lancelot," she protested earnestly; "I forgot to
count--I'll ask m