o weeks more of school. She
secured accommodations on the railway for the evening of the last day
of the term.

On the sixth day after, she appeared without warning at the parsonage
at Enderby. A pleasant-faced woman who might be Mrs. Middleton, though
she did not look like an invalid, sat on the veranda entertaining a
little girl with a big baby in a perambulator. She asked at the door
for Mr. Middleton and was shown into his study.

He came in directly, and the sight of his handsome, refined, strong and
serene face, with a vague resemblance to Elsie's, revived her drooping
spirits. Suddenly she felt that whatever he sanctioned must be right.
She inquired falteringly for Elsie before she announced her name or her
errand.

She learned that the girl was well, and, to her surprise, would be in
presently. Then the season was over, she decided, and recollecting
herself, gave her name.

He smiled. "I thought as much from the way you spoke her name," he
said. "Elsie will be delighted. May I call Mrs. Middleton?"

"Just a moment, please. I felt troubled about Elsie, Mr. Middleton,
and came on without writing or sending word. I'm impulsive too, like
Elsie, though only her stepmother."

He had never felt that Elsie was impulsive, and as he looked up in some
surprise, she wondered if he minded her comparing herself to Elsie, and
so to his sister.

"Perhaps I should have sent word," she went on. "But I hesitated. I
knew you didn't approve of Elsie's father marrying me."

"Oh, Mrs. Moss, if I had any such feeling, it has long since
disappeared," he assured her earnestly. "From the moment I saw Elsie
and realized what you have made of her, I have felt only the gratitude
I am sure my sister would have felt for your devotion to her motherless
child."

"Thank you," she said. "Now about Elsie----"

But she couldn't go on. A sudden wave of indignation swept over her.
If he had felt kindly toward her, why hadn't he warned her?

He glanced at her with some concern. She seemed so fatigued and
overwrought after the long journey that he begged her to let him call
Mrs. Middleton that she might have a cup of tea and go to her room
before Elsie's return. The latter had gone into town but would be back
very soon, for she went into the library at four.

Mrs. Moss stared at him, and he asked if Elsie hadn't told her that she
had been assistant librarian since September.

She shook her head. He wondered, and when s