oom feasts. But he was
determined to make the best of things during his short visit, so he
linked his arm in Anna's and said cheerfully, "Lead on, Hebe, and don't
scatter poppies as you go," which was exactly what she was doing. The
schoolroom was still Anna's special room, although it had changed its
character of late years. It was a large, cheerful front room, two
floors above the drawing-room, and Anna had made it very pretty and
comfortable. Here she kept her books and all her treasures, and here
her canaries twittered and sang in the sunshine. Malcolm, who loaded
her with presents, had himself selected the handsomely framed prints
that adorned the walls; his favourite "Huguenot," and "The Black
Brunswicker," and Luke Fildes's "Doctor," and some of Leader's
landscapes, had their places there. In this room Anna spent her leisure
hours, few and far between as they were; here she read and thought and
wrote her letters to Malcolm--sweet, maidenly letters, which he read
lightly and tossed aside with a smile, not unkindly, but with the
preoccupied carelessness of a busy man.

The sound of their voices brought Dawson to the door. She was a little
pincushiony woman, with bunched-up gray curls, which she wore in
defiance of all prevailing fashions, and of which she was secretly very
proud;. her complexion was still as clear and pink as a girl's; and her
somewhat wide mouth was garnished by the whitest of teeth. It was
Dawson's boast that she had never sat in a dentist's chair in her life.

"I am sixty-five if I am a day," she would say, with a quick little
birdlike nod that always emphasised her statements; "but there, mother
was eighty-three when the palsy took her, and she hadn't a gap in her
mouth, dear soul."

Malcolm always kissed his old nurse, for there was a warm attachment
between them; and indeed he never forgot that he had owed all his
childish comfort to her.

"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing," observes the wise man, and
Malcolm, who had indulged in moderate expectations in which the teapot
loomed largely, was somewhat surprised by the agreeable sight of quite
a tasteful little dinner-table laid for two, with a half-filled vase in
the centre for which the poppies were evidently intended. Anna smiled
delightedly when she saw his face, and at once proceeded to arrange her
flowers, while Dawson bustled about and rang the bell, and chattered
like an amiable magpie. In a very short time the weak-minded Charles