nowy sun-bonnet to her gentle voice, both seeming equally
unattainable to the little girl. When Geordie returned to the village on
Saturday night, he used generally to hear from Jean some glowing
narrative in Elsie's praise, to which Geordie's ears were quite wide
open, though he sat bending over his books in the "ingle neuk" of the
cottage kitchen.

When her idea of a winter at school had to be abandoned, Grace gave him
a few helpful class-books, and tried to direct his efforts to learn as
much as was possible; but, during the past year, her aunt's increasing
weakness and dependence on her companionship made it impossible for
Grace to give the boy such practical help as she would fain have done.
But Geordie had been fighting his own battle manfully, and had made more
progress than Grace guessed.

Walter had first been telling her as they walked on the terrace
together, that the day before he had found Geordie busy with a geography
book as he tended his cattle, and how pleased he had been to hear about
the new lands Walter had seen. Like Elsie, Walter felt that, in
Geordie's mind, things seemed to gather a richness and an interest with
which his own impressions had not clothed them.

"You've no idea how many queer questions the fellow asked me about
everything," continued Walter. "Indeed, Grace, I couldn't help thinking
how much more good Geordie would have got out of all the things and
places I've seen since I went away, than I have. And yet he's much too
clever for a sailor's life. What can we do with him, Grace? I really
can't bear to think of his drudging on as a farm servant to old Gowrie,
though he seems quite contented with the prospect," and Walter turned to
Grace, who glanced at her brother's kindly face with pleasure, though
not unmixed with surprise, that he should take such an interest in her
Sunday-scholar.

Walter seemed to look on Grace's class rather in a humorous light when
he first heard of its existence on his return to Kirklands. And
presently he had begun to grudge that she should devote herself to it,
and thus deprive him of the pleasure of her society during the long
Sunday afternoons, when they used to be together in the old days. And,
in the midst of all her joy in having her brother with her again, Grace
had been feeling with sadness that there was as yet no response in
Walter's heart to those unseen, eternal things, which, in her efforts to
share them with the little company on Sunday, had