rom Windermere, beside Miss Anna, with Carrie
opposite!--Carrie excitable, happy, talkative--her father's child--now
absorbed in a natural delight, exclaiming at the beauty of the
mountains, the trees, the river, catching her mother's hand, to make
her smile too, and then in a sudden shyness and hardness, looking
with her deep jealous eyes at the unknown friend opposite, wondering
clearly what it all meant, resenting that she was told so little, and
too proud to insist on more--or, perhaps, afraid to pierce what might
turn out to be the unhappy or shameful secret of their life?

Yet Phoebe had tried to make it plausible. They were going to stay
with an old friend, in a place which Carrie and her parents had lived
in when she was a baby, near to the town where she was born. She knew
already that her mother was from Westmoreland, from a place called
Keswick; but she understood that her mother's father was dead, and all
her people scattered.

Until they came actually in sight of the cottage, the child had
betrayed no memory of her own; though as they entered Langdale
her chatter ceased, and her eyes sped nervously from side to side,
considering the woods and fells and whitewashed farms. As they
stopped, however, at the foot of the steep pitch leading to the
little house, Carrie suddenly caught sight of it--the slate porch, the
yew-tree to the right, the sycamore in front. She changed colour, and
as she jumped down, she wavered and nearly fell.

And without waiting for the others she ran up the hill and through the
gate. When she met them again at the house-door, her eyes were wet.

'I've been into the kitchen,' she said, breathlessly--'and it's so
strange! I remember sitting there, and a man'--she drew her hand
across her brow--'a man, feeding me. That--that was father?'

Phoebe could not remember how she had answered her; only some
trembling words from Anna Mason, and an attempt to draw the child
away--that her mother might enter the cottage alone and unwatched. And
she had entered it alone--had walked into the little parlour.

The next thing she recollected--amid that passion of desperate tears
which had seemed to dissolve her, body and soul--were Carrie's arms
round her, Carrie's face pressed against hers.

'Mother! mother! Oh! what is the matter? Why did we come here? You've
been keeping things from me all these weeks--for years even. There
is something I don't know--I'm sure there is. Oh, it _is_ unkind. You
t