tle old
women, among which Christie recognised some that had been great
favourites long ago. But after the first glance she cared no more for
them.

On the morning of the third day, when Claude was taking his nap, the
time began to hang heavy on her hands. She took her Bible and read a
chapter or two, but in spite of herself she grew dull and dreary. The
stillness of the house oppressed her. The other servants were busy in a
distant apartment. She seemed quite shut in from all the world. Just
opposite the window was a large locust-tree, which hid the garden from
her; and the only sound that reached her was the murmur of the wind
among its branches, and the hum of the bees that now and then rested a
moment among the few blossoms that still lingered on them. Her thoughts
turned homewards.

"I might write to Effie," she said to herself. But she was not
sufficiently in the mood for it to go to her trunk for her small store
of paper and pens; and she sat still, with her head leaning on her hands
and her eyes fixed on the swaying leaves, vaguely conscious that the
indulgence of her present mood was not the best thing for her.

She was not permitted to indulge it long, however. The little boy
stirred and tossed in his crib, and she went to arrange the coverlet
over him; and as she was moving listlessly about the room, something
glistened in a stray sunbeam and caught her short-sighted eyes, and from
the cushions of the great easy-chair, where it had lain since the first
day of her coming, she drew the book that Miss Gertrude had been reading
when she watched the pretty picture she made as she sat beneath the
drooping leaves.

With a cry of delight, she recognised her old favourite, "The Lights and
Shadows of Scottish Life." The very same! though this was glittering in
blue and gold, a perfect contrast to the little, brown-covered book,
with the title-page lost, which had made Christie forget her bread and
her cooling oven on that unhappy day. But the remembrance of the old
time and the old favourite came back all the more vividly because of the
contrast. The memory of the old times came back. Oh, how long ago it
seemed since that summer afternoon when she lay on the grass and read it
for the first time! Yet how vividly it all came back! The blue sky,
with the white clouds passing over it now and then, the sound of the
wind among the low fir-trees, the smell of the hawthorn hedge, the
voices of the children