lly, it would be so much
better if those estrangements came to an end. John makes no scruple of
speaking freely about everyone, and I don't think Alfred regards Mrs
Edmund with any serious unkindness. If Mr Milvain would walk over with
the young ladies to-morrow, it would be very pleasant.'

'Then I think I may promise that he will. I'm sure I don't know where he
is at this moment. We don't see very much of him, except at meals.'

'He won't be with you much longer, I suppose?'

'Perhaps a week.'

Before Miss Harrow's departure Maud and Dora reached home. They were
curious to see the young lady from the valley of the shadow of books,
and gladly accepted the invitation offered them.

They set out on the following afternoon in their brother's company. It
was only a quarter of an hour's walk to Mr Yule's habitation, a small
house in a large garden. Jasper was coming hither for the first time;
his sisters now and then visited Miss Harrow, but very rarely saw Mr
Yule himself who made no secret of the fact that he cared little for
female society. In Wattleborough and the neighbourhood opinions varied
greatly as to this gentleman's character, but women seldom spoke
very favourably of him. Miss Harrow was reticent concerning her
brother-in-law; no one, however, had any reason to believe that she
found life under his roof disagreeable. That she lived with him at all
was of course occasionally matter for comment, certain Wattleborough
ladies having their doubts regarding the position of a deceased wife's
sister under such circumstances; but no one was seriously exercised
about the relations between this sober lady of forty-five and a man of
sixty-three in broken health.

A word of the family history.

John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough
stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at the
town's grammar school. The eldest, who was a hot-headed lad, but showed
capacities for business, worked at first with his father, endeavouring
to add a bookselling department to the trade in stationery; but the life
of home was not much to his taste, and at one-and-twenty he obtained a
clerk's place in the office of a London newspaper. Three years after,
his father died, and the small patrimony which fell to him he used
in making himself practically acquainted with the details of paper
manufacture, his aim being to establish himself in partnership with an
acquaintance who had started a small pap