you'll enjoy their company for a change. You maun try
and make friends with folk, like Menie here."

Graeme laughed. "It's easy for Menie, she's a child. But I have to
behave myself like a grown woman, at least, with most folk. I would far
rather have the afternoon to myself."

She watched them down the street, and then betook herself to her book,
and her accustomed seat at the study window. Life was very pleasant to
Graeme, these days. She did not manifest her light-heartedness by
outward signs; she was almost always as quiet as sorrow and many cares
had made her, since her mother's death. But it was a quiet always
cheerful, always ready to change to grave talk with Janet, or merry play
with the little ones. Janet's returning cheerfulness banished the last
shade of anxiety from her mind, and she was too young to go searching
into the future for a burden to bear.

She was fast growing into companionship with her father. She knew that
he loved and trusted her entirely, and she strove to deserve his
confidence. In all matters concerning her brothers and sisters, he
consulted her, as he might have consulted her mother, and as well as an
elder sister could, she fulfilled a mother's duty to them. In other
matters, her father depended upon her judgment and discretion also.
Often he was beguiled into forgetting what a child she still was, while
he discussed with her subjects more suited for one of maturer years.

And it was pleasant to be looked upon with respect and consideration, by
the new friends they had found here. She was a little more than a child
in years, and shy and doubtful of herself withal, but it was very
agreeable to be treated like a woman, by the kind people about her. Not
that she would have confessed this. Not that she was even conscious of
the pleasure it gave her. Indeed, she was wont to declare to Janet, in
private, that it was all nonsense, and she wished that people would not
speak to her always, as though she were a woman of wisdom and
experience. But it was agreeable to her all the same.

She had her wish that afternoon. Nobody came to disturb them, till the
failing light admonished her that it was time to think of Janet, and the
tea-kettle. Then there came a knock at the door, and Graeme opened it
to Mr Greenleaf. If she was not glad to see him, her looks belied her.
He did not seem to doubt a welcome from her, or her father either, as
he came in.

What the charm was, that b