"Not quite, Ermine. It still has the dizziness of a dream. I have so
often conjured up all this as a vision, that now there is nothing to
take me away from it, I can hardly feel it a reality."

"Then I shall ring. Tibbie and the poor little Lord upstairs are
substantial witnesses to the cares and troubles of real life."

CHAPTER XXX. WHO IS THE CLEVER WOMAN?

"Half-grown as yet, a child and vain,
She cannot fight the fight of death.
What is she cut from love and faith?"
Knowledge and Wisdom, TENNYSON.

It was long before the two Mrs. Keiths met again. Mrs. Curtis and Grace
were persuaded to spend the spring and summer in Scotland, and Alick's
leave of absence was felt to be due to Mr. Clare, and thus it was that
the first real family gathering took place on occasion of the opening of
the institution that had grown out of the Burnaby Bargain. This work
had cost Colonel Keith and Mr. Mitchell an infinity of labour and
perseverance before even the preliminaries could be arranged, but they
contrived at length to carry it out, and by the fourth spring after
the downfall of the F. U. E. E. a house had been erected for the
convalescents, whose wants were to be attended to by a matron, assisted
by a dozen young girls in training for service.

The male convalescents were under the discipline of Sergeant O'Brien
and the whole was to be superintended by Colonel and Mrs. Keith. Ermine
undertook to hear a class of the girls two or three times a week,
and lower rooms had been constructed with a special view to her being
wheeled into them, so as to visit the convalescents, and give them her
attention and sympathy. Mary Morris was head girl, most of the others
were from Avonmouth, but two pale Londoners came from Mr. Touchett's
district, and a little motherless lassie from the --th Highlanders was
brought down with the nursery establishment, on which Mrs. Alexander
Keith now practised the "Hints on the management of Infants."

May was unusually propitious, and after an orthodox tea-drinking, the
new pupils and all the Sunday-schools were turned out to play on the
Homestead slopes, with all the world to look on at them. It was a warm,
brilliant day, of joyous blossom and lively green, and long laughing
streaks of sunlight on the sea, and no one enjoyed it more than did
Ermine, as she sat in her chair delighting in the fresh sweetness of the
old thorns, laughing at the freaks of the scampering g