ra herself.

In a well-cushioned chair by the sunny window sat a short, stout lady
with very pretty pink hands and faded blue eyes, who rose up from her
knitting to greet the visitor. She was the old governess who lived
with Laura, and her real name was Panton, but she had always been
"Nanty" in the far-off nursery days, and so she was called still by
intimates of the family whose various branches she had trained to read
and spell. Now she was--as she herself said--eating the bread of
idleness; her two great and absorbing interests in life being Laura and
knitting. She had been afflicted doubtless with adenoids in her own
childhood, but at that time they were not generally considered
removable. At all events, she now confused her M's and B's
intermittently, as she always had done, and never troubled herself
about it, being an easy-going person.

She did not mind, for instance, telling anyone how Laura called to see
her one day when she was living in lodgings in Flodmouth, and there and
then invited her to come and keep house. But she could not tell what
caused this sudden impulse, because she did not know. As a matter of
fact, it was just one of those trifles which do influence human conduct
by touching the emotions--and always will, let cynics say what they
may. And the ridiculous thing which touched this hidden spring in
Laura was a very stale, untouched, highly ornamented cake which Miss
Panton cut with fingers that trembled from eagerness--so pleased and
excited was she by having a visitor at last. "I rather thought I might
have had a good bany callers--my papa was so well down here in the old
days. But there does not seeb to be anybody left."

The familiar "seeb"--the sudden picture of poor old Nanty waiting there
for those callers, descendants of her papa's substantial circle, who
never came--the glow of a generous girl newly engaged who wants to make
everybody else happy--all this had influenced Laura to say, without
waiting to think: "Come and live with me until I am married. I'd
simply love to have you, Nanty. Miss Wilson is always saying I ought
to have a chaperone since I ceased wandering about and went to live in
my own little house at Thorhaven."

So that was how Miss Panton came to be sitting in that pleasant corner
of the sunny room, doing her knitting and listening while Laura talked
to Miss Ethel about the nursing fund in which they were both
interested. Occasionally Miss Panton would pu