truth, an example of holiness and
wisdom.'

This comely Margaret, seeing and hearing nothing of what she sought,
bent her fair face down once more to the little sisters seated on each
side of her. To beguile the waiting time she was making for them a
chain of the daisies they had gathered as they flitted about, like gay
white butterflies, over the grass. Mary was eight years old, and
therefore able to pick daisies with discretion; but the stalks of the
flowers gathered by little Susanna were all sadly too short and the
flowers themselves suffered in her tight hot hand. At this moment
Isabel ran to join Bridget and, standing on tiptoe beside her, tried
hard to see as much as her taller sister.

'Nothing yet,' she reported, 'not a sign of the black horses nor even
the top of the coach.' Sarah, not to be outdone, swung herself up,
with a laugh, on to one of the lower boughs of the oldest yew-tree,
and standing on it thrust her golden head through the thick canopy
overhead. She peered out in her turn looking across the orchard and
over the hedge to the road, then, bending down with a laughing face to
Margaret and the little ones, 'I'm tallest now,' she exclaimed, 'and I
shall be the first to spy the coach when it reaches the top of the
hill!'

But agile Isabel, ever ready to follow a sister's lead, had already
left Bridget's side and swung herself up, past Sarah, on to a yet
higher bough.

'Methinks not, Mistress Sarah,' she called over her head, slowly and
demurely, 'for now I can see yet farther, and there are the horses'
ears and heads; yea and the chariot also, and now, at last! our
mother's face!'

But the group below had not waited for her tidings. They had heard the
rumble of the wheels and the horses' feet on the road. With cries of
joy, off they all sped down the path and across the orchard; to see
who should be first at the gate to welcome their mother. Only Margaret
stayed behind on her bench among the scattered daisies, with a
slightly pensive expression on her lovely face.

'All of them flying to greet her!' Margaret thought to herself. 'See,
Bridget has caught up even Susanna in her arms, that she shall not be
left too far behind; while I, the eldest, whom my mother doth ever
call her right hand, am forced to stay here. But my mother knows that
my knee prevents me. She will not forget her Margaret. Already she
sees me, and is beckoning the others to come this way.'

In truth Mistress Fell had already