amma!" exclaimed Priscilla.

"I don't think I said that, Hugh," murmured Dorothy, softly.

"I'm sure I don't want anything for myself," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"It's I that want it," said Hugh. "And I think that I've a right to
have my wishes respected, so far as that goes."

"My dear Hugh," said Priscilla, "the cottage is already taken, and we
shall certainly go into it. I spoke to Mrs. Crocket yesterday about
a cart for moving the things. I'm sure mamma agrees with me. What
possible business can people have to live in such a house as this
with about twenty-four shillings a week for everything? I won't do
it. And as the thing is settled, it is only making trouble to disturb
it."

"I suppose, Priscilla," said Hugh, "you'll do as your mother
chooses?"

"Mamma chooses to go. She has told me so already."

"You have talked her into it."

"We had better go, Hugh," said Mrs. Stanbury. "I'm sure we had better
go."

"Of course we shall go," said Priscilla. "Hugh is very kind and very
generous, but he is only giving trouble for nothing about this. Had
we not better go down to breakfast?"

And so Priscilla carried the day. They went down to breakfast, and
during the meal Hugh would speak to nobody. When the gloomy meal
was over he took his pipe and walked out to the cottage. It was an
untidy-looking, rickety place, small and desolate, with a pretension
about it of the lowest order, a pretension that was evidently ashamed
of itself. There was a porch. And the one sitting-room had what the
late Mr. Soames had always called his bow window. But the porch
looked as though it were tumbling down, and the bow window looked
as though it were tumbling out. The parlour and the bedroom over it
had been papered;--but the paper was torn and soiled, and in sundry
places was hanging loose. There was a miserable little room called a
kitchen to the right as you entered the door, in which the grate was
worn out, and behind this was a shed with a copper. In the garden
there remained the stumps and stalks of Mr. Soames's cabbages, and
there were weeds in plenty, and a damp hole among some elder bushes
called an arbour. It was named Laburnum Cottage, from a shrub that
grew at the end of the house. Hugh Stanbury shuddered as he stood
smoking among the cabbage-stalks. How could a man ask such a girl
as Nora Rowley to be his wife, whose mother lived in a place like
this? While he was still standing in the garden, and thinking of
Priscilla's ob