ow
extraordinarily mild it has been of late, and the lane going down to the
church is very well sheltered--I found a couple of violets in at the
roots of the hedge--within a few inches of each other, indeed--and I
gave them to Miss Francie, and she put them in her prayer-book and
carried them home. I thought the violets would not object to that, if
they only knew."

"So you went down to Winstead this morning?"

"Yes."

"And how are the old people?"

"Oh, very well."

"And Francie?"

"Very busy--and very happy, I think. If she doesn't deserve to be, who
does?" he continued, rousing himself somewhat from his absent manner. "I
suppose, now, there is no absolutely faultless woman; and yet I
sometimes think it would puzzle the most fastidious critic of human
nature to point out any one particular in which Miss Francie could be
finer than she is; I think it would. It is not my business to find
fault; I don't want to find fault; but I have often thought over Miss
Francie--her occupations, her theories, her personal disposition, even
her dress--and I've wondered where the improvement was to be suggested.
You see, she might be a very good woman, and yet have no sense of humor;
she might be very charitable, and also a little vainglorious about it;
she might have very exalted ideas of duty, and be a trifle hard on those
who did not come up to her standards; but in Miss Francie's case these
qualifications haven't to be put in at all. She always seems to me to be
doing the right thing, and just in the right way--with a kind of fine
touch that has no namby-pambiness about it. Oh, she can be firm, too;
she can scold them well enough, those children--when she doesn't laugh
and pat them on the shoulder the minute after."

"This is, indeed, something, as coming from you, Maurice!" Lionel
exclaimed. "Has it been left for you to discover an absolutely perfect
human being?"

"It isn't for you to find fault with her, anyway," the other said,
rather sharply. "She's fond enough of you."

"Who said I was finding fault with her?--not likely I am going to find
fault with Francie!" Lionel replied, with sufficient good-humor. "Well,
now that you have discovered an absolutely faultless creature, you might
come to the help of another who is only too conscious that he has plenty
of faults, and who is so dissatisfied with himself and his surroundings
that he is about sick of life altogether."

Notwithstanding the light tone in which he in