bsence of soul, Birdie. When we
had once grown intimate enough to hold our tongues if we had nothing to
say, we got on perfectly.'

'And what you had to say was about Master Michael?'

'Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with
which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing
up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.'

'More so than your snowy peaks! Ah, if the proper study of mankind is
man, the proper study of womankind is babe.'

'Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case. And let
me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few
months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted
people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.'

'Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!'

'I hope they were an education to me.'

'I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive
thing as that which they possess in common,' said Bertha.

'I wish it had been,' said Mrs. Bury gravely.

'At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,' said
Bertha, laughing.

Constance, on her Saturdays and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder.
She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to
look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with
them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could
not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and
merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen
mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in
it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did
Ida's screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these
young matrons.

Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and she could hardly be
detached from him. She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather
Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of _die
Gnadigen Frauen_. Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and
the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her only
child, after whose death she had found some consolation in taking charge
of Lady Northmoor's baby on the way home. Constance hoped Ida might
never hear this fact.

Some degree of prosperity was greeting the little heir. A bit of
moorland, hitherto regarded as worthless, had firs