aid. "Some boys is. The
angel never goes to sleep; he's always awake up there. If anything
wicked came, he'd just make himself large and spread his wings right
over me."

Jamie spoke with an air of perfect confidence which went to Elsie's
heart, and her thoughts found mental expression in Browning's beautiful
words:--

"Dear and great angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!"

Poor lonely Elsie! She, too, desired to feel the soft, white wings close
round her, shutting out all miseries of trouble and doubt, and enfolding
her in their healing atmosphere of peace.

CHAPTER XIV

_RUSHBROOK_

"About the windings of the maze to hear
The soft wind blowing. Over meadowy holms
And alders, garden aisles."
--TENNYSON.

Arnold Wayne wrote his letter to Mr. Lennard, but the rector had already
made arrangements to go to Switzerland. Mrs. Lennard, however, had
decided not to accompany him; she had made up her mind to spend a couple
of months with a maiden lady living at Rushbrook, and it was her wish
that Elsie Kilner should be with her there. So it came to pass that
Jamie and the three people who were linked together through his little
person all came to sojourn within a stone's-throw of each other. Miss
Ryan and Mrs. Lennard had been school-fellows and bosom friends, and the
friendship had lasted through all the chances and changes of life.

Willow Farm and its broad acres belonged to Miss Ryan, and was managed
for her by her nephew Francis. She lived in an old-fashioned house, long
and low, with quaint dormer-windows set in a peaked roof of red tiles.
The house stood in the middle of a garden filled to overflowing with
country flowers, and the warm, sweet perfume of the crowded beds made
Elsie feel that she had come close to the very heart of summer. The sun
was ripening the black, juicy berries on the loaded cherry-trees; bees
kept up a ceaseless hum; large roses pressed close together in masses of
bloom.

"What a little world of sweets!" said Elsie, smelling a bunch of crimson
carnations.

She was standing on the door-step after breakfast, wearing her pretty
grey gown, and a creamy muslin kerchief knotted at the throat. Her face,
under the golden straw-hat, was so richly, yet delicately, coloured that
it wore the aspect of a flower.

A slim, tall man, of eight or nine and twenty, stood looking at that
face in the morning