ts to me."

"Thank you, miss; and I'm sure I'm grateful for all the trouble you are
taking with my small affairs."

Down I went, and leaned over the wicket-gate, gazing at the unnamed
cottage. The brick pathway was scrubbed as clean as a penny, and the
stone step and the floor of the little kitchen as well. The garden was
a maze of fragrant bloom, with never a weed in sight. The fowl cackled
cheerily still, adding insult to injury, the pet sheep munched grass
contentedly, and the canaries sang in their cages under the vines.
Mrs. Bobby settled herself on the porch with a pan of peas in her neat
gingham lap, and all at once I cried:--

"'Comfort Cottage'! It is the very essence of comfort, Mrs. Bobby, even
if there is not absolute peace or rest. Let me paint the signboard for
you this very day."

Mrs. Bobby was most complacent over the name. She had the greatest
confidence in my judgment, and the characterisation pleased her
housewifely pride, so much so that she flushed with pleasure as she said
that if she 'ad 'er 'ealth she thought she could keep the place looking
so that the passers-by would easily h'understand the name.

Chapter XXIII. Tea served here.

It was some days after the naming of the cottage that Mrs. Bobby
admitted me into her financial secrets, and explained the difficulties
that threatened her peace of mind. She still has twenty-five pounds
to pay before Comfort Cottage is really her own. With her cow and
her vegetable garden, to say nothing of her procrastinating fowl, she
manages to eke out a frugal existence, now that her eldest son is in a
blacksmith's shop at Worcester, and is sending her part of his weekly
savings. But it has been a poor season for canaries, and a still poorer
one for lodgers; for people in these degenerate days prefer to be nearer
the hotels and the mild gaieties of the larger settlements. It is all
very well so long as I remain with her, and she wishes fervently that
that may be for ever; for never, she says, eloquently, never in all her
Cheltenham and Belvern experience, has she encountered such a jewel of a
lodger as her dear Miss 'Amilton, so little trouble, and always a bit of
praise for her plain cooking, and a pleasant word for the children, to
whom most lodgers object, and such an interest in the cow and the fowl
and the garden and the canaries, and such kindness in painting the
name of the cottage, so that it is the finest thing in the village, and
nobody