s a noted busybody, who knew everybody's business better than
the rest of the world.

"Oh, Lettice, dear," she said, "I do hope it's not true that you are
going to take that silly girl, Milly Harrington, up to London with you."

"Why not? You cannot know anything against her," said Lettice, who was
becoming a little angry.

"Well, perhaps not--only she is so very pretty, and London is so full of
temptations for a pretty girl of that class!"

"We shall live so quietly that she will have no more temptations there
than here, Mrs. Budworth."

"You can't tell that, my dear--once you get a girl away from her friends
and relations. However, she has only her old grandmother to fall back
on, and she seems a well-meaning girl enough, and perhaps she won't be
considered so pretty in London as she has the name of being here. I hope
she will keep straight, I'm sure; it would be such a worry to you,
Lettice, if anything went wrong."

"Poor Milly!" said Lettice to herself, as she walked home in a state of
blazing indignation; "how easily that woman would undermine your
reputation--or that of anybody else! Milly is a dear, good little girl;
and as for her being so pretty--well, it is not her fault, and I don't
see why it should be her misfortune! I will look well after her when we
are in London, and it will be for her good, I believe, to stay with us.
What an absurd fuss to make about such a trifle!"

So she dismissed the matter from her mind, remembering it only from time
to time when she was making her new household arrangements, and
carefully planning to keep Milly out of every possible danger.

But dangers are oftener from within than from without. While Lettice
walked homeward after her talk with Mrs. Budworth, Milly Harrington had
locked herself into her own room, and was experimenting with her pretty
curling hair before the looking-glass. She wanted to see herself with a
"fringe"--a thing that was strictly forbidden at the Rectory, and she
had brushed the soft little curls that were generally hidden beneath her
cap well over her forehead. Then she stood and gazed at the reflection
of the fair locks, the large blue eyes, the graceful neck and shoulders.
"I suppose I look pretty," she was saying to herself. "I've been told so
often enough. Mr. Sydney thought so when he was here at Christmas, I'm
sure of that. This time, of course, he was so taken up with his father's
death, and other things, that he never noticed me. But I