ily washing which
they support every week--on through the suburbs where the backyards
give place to gardens trim or otherwise, and beds of gay flowers
supplant the variegated garments--on until at last it reached the open
country, spreading fields and shady woodlands, where it seemed to
settle to a steady pace that threw the miles behind it, as it rushed
forward with mighty throb and roar.

Philippa Harford breathed a sigh of relief at finding herself alone in
her compartment, and arranging her belongings round her with the method
of an experienced traveller, she settled herself in a corner seat and
took up her book. She did not read for long, however, for in a few
moments her eyes wandered to the window and there fixed themselves on
the swiftly passing landscape. She let her hands fall into her lap and
sat thinking.

Some of her friends (or perhaps acquaintance would be the truer word)
had been known to describe Philippa Harford as an "odd girl," and if
this indefinite adjective meant that she was somewhat different from
the majority of young women of her generation, there was truth in the
description. For while freedom of action and of speech are notably
characteristic of the young of the present day, there was about her a
reserve, one might almost say a dignity, beyond her years. Where the
modern girl will cheerfully collect friends haphazard by the roadside,
Philippa allowed very few to pass the line which divides the stream of
acquaintanceship from the deep waters of friendship.

There are, and always will be, some people who display to the world a
formidable aspect, as it were a stone wall with a bristling row of
broken bottles on the top, or an ugly notice board with injunctions,
such as "Strictly Private," or "Keep off the Grass," but Philippa was
not one of these. You might wander in her company along paths of
pleasant conversation, through a garden where bloomed bright flowers of
intelligence and humour, and it was only afterwards that you realised
what in the enjoyment of the moment you had failed to notice, namely,
that inside the garden a high hedge, which had appeared merely a
pleasing background for the flowers, had completely hidden the part you
most particularly wished to see, and that the paths had brought you out
at the exact spot where you entered.

It was just because this hedge of gentle reticence denied to a curious
mob admission to the inner sanctuary of her thoughts, that they
designat