e generally
suffered from comparison with her sister, was still very
uncommon-looking.

"I should like to know who those young ladies are," observed a
military-looking man with a white moustache, who was standing at the
Library door waiting for his daughter to make some purchases. "Look at
them, Elizabeth: one of them is such a pretty girl, and they walk so
well."

"Dear father, I suppose they are only some new-comers: we shall see
their names down in the visitors' list by and by;" and Miss Middleton
smiled as she took her father's arm, for she was slightly lame. She
knew strangers always interested him, and that he would make it his
business for the next few days to find out everything about them.

"Did you see that nice-looking woman?" asked Phillis, when they had
passed. "She was quite young, only her hair was gray: fancy, a
gray-haired girl!"

"Oh, she must be older than she looks," returned Nan, indifferently.

She was not looking at people: she was far too busily engaged
identifying each well-remembered spot.

There was the shabby little cottage, where she and her mother had once
stayed after an illness of Mrs. Challoner's. What odd little rooms
they had occupied, looking over a strip of garden-ground full of
marigolds! "Marigolds-all-in-a-row Cottage," she had named it in her
home letters. It was nearly opposite the White House where Mrs. Cheyne
lived. Nan remembered her,--a handsome, sad-looking woman, who always
wore black, and drove out in such handsome carriages.

"Always alone; how sad!" Nan thought; and she wondered, as they walked
past the low stone walls with grassy mounds slopping from them, and a
belt of shrubbery shutting out views of the house, whether Mrs. Cheyne
lived there still.

They had reached a quiet country corner now; there was a clump of
trees, guarded by posts and chains; a white house stood far back.
There were two or three other houses, and a cottage dotted down here
and there. The road looked shady and inviting. Nan began to look about
her more cheerfully.

"I am glad it is so quiet, and so far away from the town, and that our
neighbors will not be able to overlook us."

"I was just thinking of that as a disadvantage," returned Phillis,
with placid opposition. "It is a pity, under the circumstances, that
we are not nearer the town." And after that Nan held her peace.

They were passing an old-fashioned house with a green door in the
wall, when it suddenly opened, and a ta