for the scent to lie well, that's one comfort,"
she reflected savagely.

And then she thought of the dear old kennels given over to a new
master; the hounds whose names and idiosyncrasies she had known as well
as if they had been human acquaintances. She had lost all interest in
them now. Pouto and Gellert, Lightfoot, Juno, Ringlet, Lord
Dundreary--they had forgotten her, no doubt.

Here was someone at last, but not the one for whom she was watching. A
figure clothed in a long loose black cloak and slouched felt hat, and
carrying a weedy umbrella, trudged sturdily around the curve, and came
briskly towards the porch. It was Mr. Scobel, the incumbent of the
pretty little Gothic church in the village--a church like a toy.

He was a good man and a benevolent, this Mr. Scobel; a hard-worker, and
a blessing in the neighbourhood. But just at this moment Violet Tempest
did not feel grateful to him for coming.

"What does he want?" she thought. "Blankets and coals and things, I
suppose."

She turned sullenly from the window, and went back to her seat by the
fire, and threw on a log, and gave herself up to disappointment. The
blue winter sky had changed to gray; the light was fading behind the
feathery fir-tops.

"Perhaps he will come to afternoon tea," she thought; and then, with a
discontented shrug of her shoulders: "No, he is not coming at all. If
he cared about us, he would have been the first to bid us welcome;
knowing, as he must, how miserable it was for me to come home at
all--without papa!"

She sat looking at the fire.

"How idle I am!" she mused; "and poor Crokey did so implore me to go on
with my education, and read good useful books and enlarge my mind. I
don't think my poor little mind would bear any more stretching, or that
I should be much happier if I knew all about Central Africa, and the
nearest way from Hindostan to China, or old red sandstone, and
tertiary, and the rest of them. What does it matter to me what the
earth is made of, if I can but be happy upon it? No, I shall never try
to be a highly cultivated young woman. I shall read Byron, and
Tennyson, and Wordsworth, and Keats, and Bulwer, and Dickens, and
Thackeray, and remain an ignoramus all the days of my life. I think
that would be quite enough for Rorie, if he and I were to be much
together; for I don't believe he ever opens a book at all. And what
would be the use of my talking to him about old red sandstone or the
centre of Africa?"