d let us hope it
will be a reminder to you, Biddy, every time you wear this frock.'

Bridget murmured something; she meant to be very good. But when she got
a little behind her mother and Alie again she gave herself a shake.

'I shouldn't like that at all,' she thought. 'I should hate this frock
if it was always to remind me. I think mamma is rather like the mamma in
_Rosamund_ when she speaks that way, and I'm like Rosamund on her day of
misfortunes, only all my days are days of misfortunes. But I do think
I'm nicer than she was.'

As they reached the edge of the shore, where a gate opened into a
pathway through a field to the Rectory itself, Mrs. Vane stopped to look
across once more at the sunset.

'Yes, he is just going--just. Look, children.'

Alie turned too, but Biddy walked on.

'I don't want to look again,' she said. 'I've said good-night to him
once.'

Mrs. Vane glanced at Rosalys.

'What's the matter now?' her glance seemed to say.

Rosalys smiled back.

'It isn't naughtiness,' she whispered. 'It's only some fancy.'

And so it was.

'I said good-night to him when I'd fixed to try to be good,' Bride was
saying to herself, 'and if I look at him again now it'll undo the
fixing. Besides, I've begun to feel a little naughty again already--I
don't like Rosamund's mamma.'

As they walked up the path, Smut, who was really Mrs. Vane's dog and had
got his own ideas as to etiquette, returned to his mistress's side and
trotted along gravely. He knew that his chances of scampers were over
for the day, for not even the most ardent runner could have crossed the
field at full speed without coming to grief. It was rough and stony,
and to call it a field was a figure of speech; the soil was nothing but
sand, and the grass was of the coarsest. But the Rectory stood on rather
rising ground, and old Dr. Bunton and his wife had fortunately been fond
of gardening. The lawn on the farther side of the house was very
respectable, and more flowers and shrubs had been coaxed to grow than
could have been expected. Still, to newcomers fresh from a comfortable
town-house--and there is no denying that as far as comfort goes a
town-house in winter has many advantages over a small country one--it
did look somewhat dreary and desolate. All the brightness had gone out
of the sky by now; it loomed blue-gray behind the chimneys, and a faint
murmuring as of wind in the distance getting up its forces began to be
heard.

Mrs. Vane