artload of bricks being tipped," said Mrs. Bradford
rather faintly.

"Only!" said Miss Ethel. "Don't you know that means they are beginning
to build? And just on the other side of our hedge! And then you
calmly stand there and say 'Only!' I wish I were made like you,
Marion."

But she very obviously entertained no such desire, and Mrs. Bradford
walked on, saying over her shoulder: "I really came out to remind you
about going to Laura Temple's. If you really want to see her, it's
high time you went."

Miss Ethel pulled her watch out of her belt, glanced at it and hurried
indoors, but came out again almost immediately in a hat, with a bundle
of papers in her hand. As she went down the road, she--like every one
else--being unable to take in all the impressions that pressed round
her, only absorbed those which fed the dominant idea in her mind,
automatically neglecting the rest. So when she turned out of the
garden gate and caught a glimpse of the cornfields beyond the Cottage
where a lark was singing, she missed the idea of permanence--seed-time
and harvest never failing--which might have soothed her mind, and only
thought how soon these fields too would be built over and spoilt.

Change--change everywhere; not only thrones falling and ancient estates
going to the hammer, but little people like herself and Marion all over
the world made to feel it every hour. The very spire pointing upwards
against the blue-grey sky reminded her less of the eternal message than
of something in the service which was different from what it used to be
when she was a girl.

But at last she reached a part of Thorhaven which did unconsciously
soothe and console her, for it remained just the same: white cottages
clustered under high trees and a little house facing the road where
Laura Temple lived with an old governess. The house was plain, built
close on to the pavement after the old Yorkshire village fashion; and a
flagged passage led through it to the garden behind; so when the doors
stood open, as now, a blaze of sunlight and clear colour was framed in
the further doorway.

While Miss Ethel stood waiting on the step, Laura entered from the
garden with some flowers in her hands. "Oh! Do come in, Miss Wilson,"
she said. "This is nice of you." And she led the way into a square
room hung with white curtains and light chintz covers; not an
"artistic" room at all, but one which somehow matched the garden
outside, as well as Lau