nd they will not come right. I should
be so much obliged to you if you would just look them over for me.'

Rowland seated himself at Freda's desk, and began at once to do her
bidding. The ragged school was the one in which he was so much
interested, and that he had been instrumental in establishing.

Whilst Miss Gwynne had been living with her friend, Mrs Jones, she had
seen a great deal of Rowland; they had, in fact, been thrown much
together. At first, Rowland ceased to come to consult the Joneses, or to
spend his few spare hours with them, when he heard that Freda was there;
and, of course, they and she understood and respected his reasons for
absenting himself; but in the course of time, they met at Sir Philip
Payne Perry's, at his rector's, and elsewhere, and his reserve slightly
wore off. When Freda began to assist Mrs Jones in her parish work, and
threw herself, heart and soul, into the ragged school, they met of
necessity very frequently. Freda was so studiously polite in her manners
to him, and so careful to avoid every subject that would recall their
old relations at Glanyravon, that he gradually felt more at his ease
with her, and it ended by his resuming his old, friendly intercourse
with Mr and Mrs Jones. But Freda knew well that, in spite of her best
efforts to propitiate him, he never forgot those words, 'Do you know who
I am, and who you are?' He was always gentlemanlike, always kind, always
ready to do anything she asked him, but he never relaxed the somewhat
formal respect of his manner. In society, he was quite different with
every one else to what he was with her. With the Perrys he was as much
at ease as if he were their own son; and they seemed almost to consider
him as such. At his rector's he was the life of their little circle, and
might have been, Freda shrewdly suspected, united to it by a link closer
than that of curate, had he so chosen; for there was a very pretty
daughter who evidently looked upon him with favourable eyes. Amongst the
respectable portion of his flock he was a general favourite, and all the
young ladies, as young ladies will, worked with and for him; not only in
the matter of schools, but in slippers and purses. What was still more
clear and satisfactory to Freda was, that he made way amongst the
miserable poor.

The ragged school children loved him, and through them, he got at the
hearts of some of their degraded parents. His seemed a labour of love
with every one but he