nt, Raeburn had stepped
forward and had wrapped a white woolen scarf more closely round the
child, securing the fluttering ends. Brian would have liked to do it
himself had he dared, and yet it pleased him, too, to see the father's
thoughtfulness; perhaps in that "touch of nature," he, for the first
time, fully recognized his kinship with the atheist.

Erica talked to him in the meantime with a delicious, childlike
frankness, gave him an enthusiastic account of her friend, Hazeldine,
the working man whom he had seen her speaking to, and unconsciously
reveled in her free conversation a great deal of the life she led, a
busy, earnest, self-denying life Brian could see. When they reached the
place of their afternoon's encounter, she alluded merrily to what she
called the "charge of umbrellas."

"Who would have thought, now, that in a few hours' time we should have
learned to know each other!" she exclaimed. "It has been altogether the
very oddest day, a sort of sandwich of good and bad, two bits of the
dry bread of persecution, put in between, you and Mr. Osmond and my
beautiful new Longfellow."

Brian could not help laughing at the simile, and was not a little
pleased to hear the reference to his book; but his amusement was soon
dispelled by a grim little incident. Just at that minute they happened
to pass an undertaker's cart which was standing at the door of one of
the houses; a coffin was born across the pavement in front of them.
Erica, with a quick exclamation, put her hand on his arm and shrank back
to make room for the bearers to pass. Looking down at her, he saw that
she was quite pale. The coffin was carried into the house and they
passed on.

"How I do hate seeing anything like that!" she exclaimed. Then looking
back and up to the windows of the house: "Poor people! I wonder whether
they are very sad. It seems to make all the world dark when one comes
across such things. Father thinks it is good to be reminded of the
end, that it makes one more eager to work, but he doesn't even wish for
anything after death, nor do any of the best people I know. It is
silly of me, but I never can bear to think of quite coming to an end, I
suppose because I am not so unselfish as the others."

"Or may it not be a natural instinct, which is implanted in all, which
perhaps you have not yet crushed by argument."

Erica shook her head.

"More likely to be a little bit of one of my covenanting ancestors
coming out in me. Sti