and her gratitude for
the welcome with which she was received was most touching.

The rest of her family were in course of removing to their new home,
where Mrs. Fanshaw would be mistress of the house, and so Eleonora's
stay at Compton was prolonged till the general migration to London,
which was put off till Easter. Just before this, Herbert Bowater
came back from Natal, and walked from Strawyers with all his happy
dogs, as strong and hearty and as merry as ever; his boyish outlines
gone, but wholesome sunburn having taken the place of his rosiness,
and his bonny smile with its old joyousness. He had married Jenny
and Archie himself, and stayed a month on their ostrich farm, which
he declared was a lesson on woman's rights, since Mrs. Ostrich was
heedless and indifferent as to her eggs, but was regularly hunted
back to the duties by her husband, who always had two wives, and
regularly forced them to take turns in sitting; a system which
Herbert observed would be needful if the rights of women were to
work. He had brought offerings of eggs and feathers to Lady
Rosamond, and pockets full of curiosities for all his village
friends; also, he had been at the Cape, had seen Glen Fraser,
rejoiced the inhabitants with his accounts of Anne, and brought home
a delightful budget for her.

But the special cause of his radiance was a letter he brought from
his father to Mr. Bindon. The family living, which had decided his
own profession, had fallen vacant, and his father, wishing perhaps
not to be thought cruel and unnatural by his wife, had made no
appointment until Herbert's return, well knowing that he would
decide against himself: and feeling that, as things stood, it would
be an awkward exercise of patronage to put him in at once. Herbert
had declared that nothing would have induced him to accept what he
persuaded his father to let him offer to James Bindon, whom he had
found to have an old mother in great need of the comfortable home,
which, without interest, or any talent save for hard work, he could
scarcely hope to secure to her.

"And you, Herbert," said Julius, "can I ask you to come back to me,
now that we shall have a fair amount to do between us?"

Herbert smiled and shook his head, as he took out an advertisement
for a curate in one of the blackest parishes of the Black Country.
"I've written to answer that," he said.

Julius did not try to hinder him. What had been exaggerated had
parsed away, and he w