lesson at Bilton, she was
still at it with an energy worthy of a woman, half her age.

That stupid little girl at Bilton, who generally found her music-lesson
such an intolerable weariness to the flesh, and was conscious that it
was no less so to her teacher, found the half-hour to-day quite
pleasant. Mr Robins had never been so kind and cheerful, quite
amusing, laughing at her mistakes, and allowing her to play just the
things she knew best, and to get up in the middle of the lesson to go
to the window and see a long procession of gypsy vans going by to
Smithurst fair.

It was such a very beautiful day; perhaps it was this that produced
such a good effect on the organist's temper. There had been a frost
that morning, but it was not enough to strip the trees, but only to
turn the elms a richer gold, and the beeches a warmer red, and the oaks
a ruddier brown; while in the hedges the purple dogwood, and hawthorn,
and bramble leaves made a wonderful variety of rich tints in the full
bright sunshine, which set the birds twittering with a momentary
delusion that it might be spring.

He did not come back over the hill, and past the Grays' cottage, for he
was going to fetch the child that evening; but he came home by the
road, meeting many more of those gypsy vans which had distracted his
pupil's attention, and looking with kindliness on the swarthy men and
bronze dark-eyed women, for the sake of little Zoe, who had been so
often called the gypsy baby.

When he reached home he found the room prepared with all the care Jane
Sands could lavish. He had thought when he went in that morning that
it was just as Edith had left it, and all in the most perfect order;
but now the room was a bower of daintiness and cleanliness, and all
Edith's old treasures had been set out in the very order she used to
arrange them--why! even her brush and comb were laid ready on the
dressing-table, and a pair of slippers by the bedside, and a small
bunch of autumn anemones and Czar violets was placed in a little glass
beside her books. He smiled, but with tears in his eyes, as he saw all
these loving preparations.

'Edith can hardly be here to-night,' he said to himself, 'but Zoe
will.' And he smoothed the pillow of the cot close to the bedside, and
drew the curtain more closely over its head.

He found his tea set ready for him when he came down, but Jane Sands
had gone out, and he was rather glad of it, as she had watched him that
morni