if it was God's will, she felt
she must take to Joan. But Aunt Priscilla took to Joan as a cross.

To Rhoda, however, Joan was altogether welcome. She had never had a
playfellow, and Joan was so small and light and delicate that she seemed
almost like a plaything, a living doll. The two were never apart. They
rambled together about the breezy mountains, catching glimpses of the
blue sea here and there; and they ran down the rough, rocky lane to the
village on the shore, two miles away; and they kept house on
market-days, as if it had been a merry sort of game, when Aunt Priscilla
was away. It was a wonderful change to Joan from her close, dark little
room in London.

The farm-house had been built at different times, and though it
contained no more than four bedrooms, there were three staircases in it,
two of them leading up to single rooms. One of these was set apart for
Joan and Rhoda, where the window looked out upon the small garden and
the green mountain slopes, with the sea and the sky around and above
them.

[Illustration: THE TWO WERE NEVER APART]

The farm kitchen, where they chiefly lived, opened into the fold, round
which were built the stables and the cow-sheds, with the barn filling up
one side of it, between them and the house. In the middle lay a heap
of rotting straw, where the pigs burrowed and the fowls scratched
diligently for hidden food; and all round it ran a causeway of large
round stones, on which the hoofs of the horses rang, and even the soft,
slow tread of the cows could be heard. There was a small blacksmith's
forge at the end of the fold, for old Parry had been something of a
smith himself, and Miss Priscilla could quite well overlook the shoeing
of her horses and the mending of her cart-wheels.

The house-door was always open, and as there was not a morsel of carpet
in the place, not even in the parlour, no one was afraid of dirty
footsteps. There seemed to be something of busy and cheerful work going
on every day, though the place was so far removed from any town or
village.

CHAPTER II

JOAN'S SEARCH

Miss Priscilla Parry's head servant, old Nathan, took to Joan from the
first. He was a white-headed, strong old man, nearly seventy years of
age, but still able to do a fair day's work, or to take the whole
management of affairs, if Miss Priscilla were laid up, which she never
had been in all her life. He had lived as a boy with her grandfather,
and as a man with her fathe