d been alone, unneeded,
unobserved, for Joan refused to leave the nursery floor, even for meals,
and Geoffrey remained by her side. Looking back over the whole course
of her life, the girl could not remember a time when she had been so
utterly thrown on herself. Always there had been some one at hand to
love, to pity, to demand. At school, at the time of her father's death,
there had been a bevy of dear girl friends--saintly Margaret, spectacled
Kate, Clara of the high forehead and long upper lip, Lottie, pretty and
clever, each vieing with the other to minister to her needs. Pixie
followed in thought the history of each old friend. Margaret had become
a missionary and had sailed for far-off China, Clara was mistress in a
High School, Lottie lived in India, married to a soldier husband, Kate
was domiciled as governess in Scotland. All were far away, all
engrossed in new interests, new surroundings.

Later on, in Pixie's own life, a lonely time had come when she had been
sent to Paris, to finish her education in the home of the dear school
Mademoiselle. She had been lonely then, it is true--homesick,
homeland-sick, so sick that she had even contemplated running away. But
how good they had been to her;--Mademoiselle and her dear old father--
how wise, how tactful, above all, how _kind_! Monsieur had died a few
years before and gone to his last "repose," and Mademoiselle--marvellous
and incredible fact--Mademoiselle had married a grey-bearded,
bald-headed personage whom her English visitor had mentally classed as a
contemporary of "_mon pere_" and tottering on the verge of dotage. It
appeared, however, by after accounts, that he was barely fifty, which
Dick Victor insisted was an age of comparative vigour. "Quite a
suitable match!" he had pronounced it, but Pixie obstinately withheld
her approval. Mademoiselle, as mademoiselle, would have been a regular
visitor for life; Madame, the wife of a husband exigent in disposition,
and deeply distrustful of "_le mer_" must perforce stay dutifully at
home in Paris, and was therefore lost to her English friends.

Ah! The years--what changes they brought! What toll they demanded! So
many friends lost to sight, drifted afar by the stream of life. So many
changes, so _many_ breaks. _What would the years bring next_?

Pixie shut her eyes and leaned back in her seat, and being young, and
sad, and faint, and hungry, and very, very tired, Mother Nature came to
her aid, a