Christopher Kirkbright.

He had not been at home of late; he had been busy up at Brickfield
Farms.

For nearly four months past, Cone Hill and the Clay Pits had been
his by purchase and legal transfer. He had lost no time in making
his offer to his brother-in-law. Ten words by the Atlantic cable had
done it, and the instructions had come back by the first mail
steamer. Repairing and building had been at once begun; an odd,
rambling wing, thrown out eastward, slanting off at a wholly
unarchitectural angle from the main house, and climbing the terraced
rock where it found best space and foothold, already made the quaint
structure look more like a great two-story Chinese puzzle than ever,
and covered in space for an ample, airy, sunny work-saloon above a
range of smaller rooms calculated for individual and home occupancy.

But the details of the plan at Brickfields would make a long story
within a story; we may have further glimpses of it, on beyond; we
must not leave our friends now standing in the street.

Mr. Kirkbright held out his hand to Desire, as he stopped to speak
with her.

"I am going down to Vireo's," he said. "I have come to a place in my
work where I want him."

"So have I," said Desire. "But he is not at home. I was going next
to Miss Euphrasia."

"And you and I are sent to stop each other. My sister is away, at
Milton, for two days."

Desire turned round. "Then I must go home again," she said.

Mr. Kirkbright moved on, down the hill beside her.

"Can I do anything for you?" he inquired.

"Yes," returned Desire, pausing, and looking gravely up at him. "If
you could go down to Luclarion Grapp's,--the Neighbors, you
know,--and carry some kind of a promise to a poor thing who has just
been brought there, and who thinks there is no promise in the world;
a woman who tried to kill her baby to get him out of it, and who
says that the world is hell, and people don't know they've got into
it. Go and tell her some of the things you told me, that morning up
at Brickfields."

"You have been to her? What have you told her yourself, already?"

"I told her that it was not all badness when one could feel the
misery of the badness. That her pain at it was God's pain for her.
That if He had done with her, she would be dead."

"Would she believe you? Did she seem to begin to believe?"

"I do not think she believes anything. She can't until the things to
believe in come to her. Mr. Vireo--or you--would make