et, that never was empty, and her
busy fingers, that never were still. The father sat beside her; he
kept his old habit of liking to have her close to him; ay, even though
he was falling into the middle-aged comforts of an arm-chair and
newspaper. There he sat, sometimes reading aloud, or talking;
sometimes lazily watching her, with silent, loving eyes, that saw
beauty in his old wife still.

The young folk scattered themselves about the room. Guy and Walter at
the unshuttered window--we had a habit of never hiding our
home-light--were looking at the moon, and laying bets, sotto voce, upon
how many minutes she would be in climbing over the oak on the top of
One-tree Hill. Edwin sat, reading hard--his shoulders up to his ears,
and his fingers stuck through his hair, developing the whole of his
broad, knobbed, knotted forehead, where, Maud declared, the wrinkles
had already begun to show. For Mistress Maud herself, she flitted
about in all directions, interrupting everything, and doing nothing.

"Maud," said her father, at last, "I am afraid you give a great deal of
trouble to Uncle Phineas."

Uncle Phineas tried to soften the fact, but the little lady was
certainly the most trying of his pupils. Her mother she had long
escaped from, for the advantage of both. For, to tell the truth, while
in the invisible atmosphere of moral training the mother's influence
was invaluable, in the minor branch of lesson-learning there might have
been found many a better teacher than Ursula Halifax. So the
children's education was chiefly left to me; other tutors succeeding as
was necessary; and it had just begun to be considered whether a lady
governess ought not to "finish" the education of Miss Halifax. But
always at home. Not for all the knowledge and all the accomplishments
in the world would these parents have suffered either son or
daughter--living souls intrusted them by the Divine Father--to be
brought up anywhere out of their own sight, out of the shelter and
safeguard of their own natural home.

"Love, when I was waiting to-day in Jessop's bank--"

(Ah! that was another change, to which we were even yet not familiar,
the passing away of our good doctor and his wife, and his brother and
heir turning the old dining-room into a "County Bank--open from ten
till four.")

"While waiting there I heard of a lady who struck me as likely to be an
excellent governess for Maud."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Halifax, not over-enthu