est, and the doctor's young sister had yielded to various
pressure, and promised to stay with the children until he returned.
There was every reason for it. She had loved and been loved by the
gentle Maori mother; she delighted in the dark beauty and sweetness of
the children. And they, on their side, clung to her as to an adorable
fairy relative, dowered with love and the fruits of love--tales and new
games and tender ways. Best reason of all, in a sense, Mrs. Bentley,
that kind autocrat, entreated her to stay, "as the happiest thing for
the children, and to please that poor lamb we laid yonder, who fair
longed that you should! She was mightily taken up with you, Miss
Danby, and you've your brother and his wife near, so that you won't be
lonesome, and if there's aught I can do to make you comfortable, you've
only to speak, miss." As for Mr. Denison, he was pathetically grateful
and relieved when Alice promised to remain.

After the evening romp and the last good-night, when the two elder
children, Ben and Marie, called after her mother, Maritana, had given
her their last injunctions to be sure and come for them "her very own
self" on her way down to breakfast in the morning, she usually rode down
between the cabbage-trees, down by the old rata, fired last autumn,
away through the grasslands to the doctor's house, a few miles nearer
Rochester; or he and his wife would ride out to chat with her. But there
were many evenings when she preferred the quiet of the airy house and
the garden. The colonial life was new to her, everything had its charm,
and in the colonies there is always a letter to write to those at
home--the mail-bag is never satisfied. On such evenings it was her
custom to cross the meadow to the copse of feathery trees beyond, where,
sung to by the brook and the Tui, the children's mother slept. And from
the high presence of the Mountain Beautiful there fell a dew of peace.

She would often ask Mrs. Bentley to sit with her until bedtime,
and revel in the shrewd north-country woman's experiences, and her
impressions of the new land to which love had brought her. Both women
grew to have a sincere and trustful affection for each other, and one
night, seven or eight months after Mrs. Denison's death, Mrs. Bentley
told a story which explained what had frequently puzzled Alice--the
patient sorrow in Mrs. Denison's eyes, and Mr. Denison's harassed and
dejected manner. "But for your goodness to the children," said t