ed up, a courier engaged--rooms secured at the
best hotel in the place they were going to--for all these things can be
done in no time when people have lots of money, grandmamma said--and
they were gone! Moor Court shut up and deserted, except for the few
servants left in charge, to keep it clean and in good order.

I only went there once all that winter, and I never went again. I could
not bear it. For in among the trees where we played I came upon the
traces of our last paper-chase, and passing the side of the house it was
even worse. For the schoolrooms and play-room were in that wing, and
above them the nurseries, where Vallie used to rub her little nose
against the panes when she was shut up with one of her bad colds. Some
cleaning was going on, for it was like Longfellow's poem exactly--

'I saw the nursery windows
Wide open to the air,
But the faces of the children,
They were no longer there.'

I just squeezed grandmamma's hand without speaking, and we turned away.

It _is_ true that troubles do not often come alone. That winter was one
of the very severe ones I have spoken of, that come now and then in that
part of Middleshire.

For the Nestors' sake it made us all the more glad that they were safely
away from weather which, in his delicate state, would very probably have
killed their father. I think this was our very first thought when the
snow began to fall, only two or three weeks after they left, and went on
falling till the roads were almost impassable, and remained lying for I
am afraid to say how long, so intense was the frost that set in.

I thought it rather good fun just at the beginning, and wished I could
learn to skate. Grandmamma did not seem to care about my doing so, which
I was rather surprised at, as she had often told me stories of how fond
she was of skating when she was young, and how clever papa and Uncle Guy
were at it.

She said I had no one to teach me, and when I told her that I was sure
Tom Linden, a nephew of the vicar's who was staying with his uncle and
aunt just then, would help me, she found some other objection. Tom was a
very stupid, very good-natured boy. I had got to know him a little at
the Nestors. He was slow and heavy and rather fat. I tried to make
granny laugh by saying he would be a good buffer to fall upon. I saw she
was looking grave, and I felt a little cross at her not wanting me to
skate, and I persisted about it.

'Do let me, grandmamma,' I s