parted with a friendly nod, glad to have met and
sure to meet again.

"I'll come and see Bessie soon," she said gently, as she moved on.

"Aye. Yo'll be varra welcome."

She stepped forward briskly, gained the high road, and presently saw in
front of her a small white house, recently built, and already embowered
in a blossoming garden. Lilacs sent their fragrance to greet her;
rhododendrons glowed through the twilight, and a wild-cherry laden with
bloom reared its white miracle against the walls of the house.

Lydia stood at the gate devouring the tree with her eyes. The blossom
had already begun to drop. "Two days more"--she said to herself,
sighing--"and it'll be gone--till next year. And it's been out such a
little, little while! I seem hardly to have looked at it. It's horrible
how short-lived all the beautiful things are."

"Lydia!" A voice called from an open window.

"Yes, mother."

"You're dreadfully late, Lydia! Susan and I have finished supper long
ago."

Lydia walked into the house, and put her head into the drawing-room.

"Sorry, mother! It was so lovely, I couldn't come in. And I met a dear
old shepherd I know. Don't bother about me. I'll get some milk and cake."

She closed the door again, before her mother could protest.

"Girls will never think of their meals!" said Mrs. Penfold to herself in
irritation. "And then all of a sudden they get nerves--or consumption--or
something."

As she spoke, she withdrew from the window, and curled herself up on a
sofa, where a knitted coverlet lay, ready to draw over her feet. Mrs.
Penfold was a slight, pretty woman of fifty with invalidish Sybaritic
ways, and a character which was an odd mixture of humility and
conceit--diffidence and audacity. She was quite aware that she was not as
clever as her daughters. She could not write poetry like Susan, or paint
like Lydia. But then, in her own opinion, she had so many merits they
were without; merits which more than maintained her self-respect, and
enabled her to hold her ground with them. For instance: by the time she
was four and twenty, Lydia's age, she had received at least a dozen
proposals. Lydia's scalps, so far as her mother knew, were only
two--fellow-students at South Kensington, absurd people, not to be
counted. Then, pretty as Lydia was, her nose could not be compared for
delicacy with her mother's. "My nose was always famous"--Mrs. Penfold
would say complacently to her daughters--"it was that which