omance ever since they were children together, and she feared
that a word from her about him might set the women to smiling and
sympathising and to taking her affairs out of her own hands.

As the home-life settled to its usual colour and cares, Denas became
conscious of a change in it. She saw that her father went very seldom
to sea, that he was depressed and restless, and that her mother, in a
great measure, echoed his moods. And she was obliged to confess that
she was terribly weary. There was little housework to do, except what
fell naturally to Joan's care, and interference with these duties
appeared to annoy the methodical old woman. The knitting was far
ahead, there were no nets to mend; and when Denas had made herself a
couple of dresses, there seemed to be no work for her to do. And she
was not specially fond of reading. Culture and study she could
understand if their definite end was money; but for the simple love
of information or pleasure books were not attractive to her.

So in a month she had come to a place in her experience when it was a
consolation to think of that sixteen hundred pounds in London. She
might yet find it necessary to her happiness; for without some change
she could not much longer endure the idleness and monotony of her
life. Fortunately the change came. One morning a woman visited the
cottage, and the sole burden of her conversation was the lack of a
school in St. Penfer by the Sea to which the fisher-children might go
in the morning.

"Here be my six little uns," she cried, "and up the cliff they must
hurry all, through any wind or weather, or learn nothing. And then
they be that tired when they do get home again, they be no use at all
about the bait-boxes or the boats. There be sixty school-going
children in the village, and I do say there ought to be a school here
for them."

And suddenly it came into the heart of Denas to open a school. Pay or
no pay, she was sure she would enjoy the work, and that afternoon she
went about it. An empty cottage was secured, a fisher-carpenter agreed
to make the benches, and at an outlay of two or three pounds she
provided all that was necessary. The affair made a great stir in the
hamlet. She had more applications for admission than the cottage would
hold, and she selected from these thirty of the youngest of the
children.

For the first time in many months Denas was sensible of enthusiasm in
her employment. But Joan did not apparently share he