ble daughters to the more reasonable
number of five, and the approval of their creditors was practically
unanimous.

They had been engaged for a month, when, upon that same afternoon, she
arrived on a short visit to the Walkingshaw's house. Andrew would have
met her at the station had her train arrived only twenty minutes later,
but it was one of the most admirable features in his character that he
made a point of never on any pretext leaving the office before the hour
had struck. Frank, however, showed remarkable alacrity in offering
himself as substitute. So zealous and obliging a brother was he that he
started for the station with half an hour to spare, and whiled away a
portion of that time in purchasing a bouquet of flowers and a very
ornamental box of chocolates.

Holding the chocolate-box and his umbrella under one arm and the bouquet
in his other hand, this best of brothers paced that eligible promenade,
the platform of the Haymarket station. People, especially women, glanced
at him with approval as the erect, military young figure passed and
repassed on his vigil, marching as though on parade. He was twenty-five,
bronzed of skin, well-featured, trimly mustached, modest and yet gallant
of mien, attired in an overcoat drawn in at the waist and a hat
becomingly cocked a little towards his left ear--in a word, a credit to
that distinguished corps, the Cromarty Highlanders. At present they were
in India, and he was home on furlough.

Sometimes his clear young eyes looked disconsolately into space,
as though the saddest thoughts afflicted him; and then they would
brighten with a sudden excitement. As these brightenings almost
invariably coincided with the first rumbling of a train far down the
line that glimmered beneath red lamps and green, leading from the north
out of the gathered dusk, it seemed as though the cheering prospect came
from thence. This probability would appear to be increased by the
disappearance of the excitement when the train proved to come from
some locality of no interest whatsoever. An observant female in glasses
and a golf cape, who entertained herself by furtively studying this
agreeable-looking stranger, smiled knowingly at each of these
manifestations: _she_ knew whom he was waiting for, even without the
palpable evidence of the bouquet and chocolate-box, and the only thing
that puzzled her was why he should have these very mournful lapses. A
secret grief seemed inappropriate both to th