, and mauves of thirty years ago. She
admired with all her soul the hard, staring flowers which these colors
produced. They looked, she said, substantial and durable. They _looked_
like artificial flowers; nobody could mistake them for the real article,
which was occasionally known to be the case with that flimsy, in her
opinion, ugly, art embroidery. No, no, Mrs. Cameron would not be smitten
by the art craze. "Let nature _be_ nature!" she would say, "and worsted
work be worsted work, and don't let us try to clash the poor things into
one, as that wretched art-school is always endeavoring to do." So each
morning Mrs. Cameron plied her worsted needle, and Scorpion slumbered
peacefully on her knee. She liked to sit with her back to the light, so
that it should fall comfortably on her work, and her own eyes be
protected from an extensive and very beautiful view of the south moor.

Mrs. Cameron hated the moor; it gave her, as she expressed it, "the
creeps," and on all occasions she avoided looking at it. On this
morning, as usual, she took out her large roll of worsted work, and
prepared to ground a huge, impossible arum lily. Her thoughts, however,
were not, as usual, with her work. Her cheeks were flushed, and her
whole face expressed annoyance and anxiety.

"How I miss even his dear little playful bite!" she said aloud, a big
tear falling on her empty lap. "Ah, my Scorpion! why did I love you, but
to lose you? How true are the poet's words:

'I never loved a dear gazelle.'

Well, I must say it, I seldom came across more wicked, heartless
children than the Maybrights and Daisy Rymple. David is really the only
one of the bunch worth rearing. Ah, my poor sister! your removal has
doubtless spared you many sorrows, for what could you expect of the
future of such a family as yours? Now, what is that? This moor is enough
to keep anybody's nerves in a state of tension. What _is_ that awful
sound approaching the house?"

The noise in question was the unmistakable one of a woman's loud
sobbing. It came nearer and nearer, gaining in fullness and volume as it
approached the house.

Mrs. Cameron was always intensely curious. She threw open the
drawing-room window; and as the sufferer approached, effectually stopped
her progress with her own stout person.

"Now, my dear, good creature, what is this most unpleasant sound? Don't
you know that it is frightfully bad-mannered to cry in that loud,
unrestrained fashion? Pray restrain