cter still to be
known by himself. This, as regards him, seemed the special mission of Phyl
in the world.

"It's the likeness," said Miss Pinckney. "I thought it was Juliet
Mascarene there before me in the sun, Juliet dead those years and years."
Then commanding herself, and with one of those reverses, sudden changes of
manner and subject peculiar to herself:

"Where's your luggage?"

"Abraham is bringing it along."

"Abraham! Do you mean you didn't drive, _walked_ here from the station?"

"Yes," said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin against
the _covenances_ he had committed now.

"And she after that journey from N'York. Richard Pinckney, you are
a--man--I was going to have called you a fool--but it's the same thing.
Here, come on both of you--the child must be starving. This is the
breakfast room, Phyl--Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter,
I'm getting an old woman, and mustn't grumble--mustn't grumble--umph!"

She took Pinckney's walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, picked
up a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the
floor.

She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered the
coloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.

Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she was
without removing her hat.

The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faint
with hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her
conclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.

It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-legged
table that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was
brought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by a
red hot iron contained in a cylinder.

Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, but
Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this lady
was almost rude--or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mind
often outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when it
ought to have been in the present.

Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed
her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that
old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it
measured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that the
thin lips, lips whose thinness se