omise from Mrs. Goddard to come and
dine, bringing Nellie with her, on the following day, in case she should
have recovered by that time from her headache.

But during all that night Mrs. Goddard lay awake, listening for the sound
she so much dreaded, of a creeping footstep on the slated path outside
and for the tapping at the window. Nothing came, however, and as the grey
dawn began to creep in through the white curtains, she fell peacefully
asleep. Nellie would not let her be waked, and breakfasted without her,
enjoying with childish delight the state of being waited on by Martha
alone.

Meanwhile, at an early hour, John arrived at the vicarage and was
received with open arms by Mr. Ambrose and his wife. The latter seemed to
forget, in the pleasure of seeing him again, that she had even once
spoken doubtfully of him or hinted that he was anything short of
perfection itself. And to prove how much she had done for him she
communicated with great pride the squire's message, to the effect that he
expected John at the Hall that very day.

John's heart leaped with delight at the idea. It was natural. He was
indeed most sincerely attached to the Ambroses, and most heartily glad to
be with them; but he had never in his life had an opportunity of staying
in a "big" house, as he would have described it. It seemed as though he
were already beginning to taste the sweet first-fruits of success after
all his labour and all his privations; it was the first taste of another
world, the first mouthful of the good things of life which had fallen to
his lot. Instantly there rose before him delicious visions of hot-water
cans brought by a real footman, of luxurious meals served by a real
butler, of soft carpets perpetually beneath his feet, of liberty to
lounge in magnificent chairs in the magnificent library; and last, though
not least, there was a boyish feeling of delight in the thought that when
he went to see Mrs. Goddard he would go from the Hall, that she would
perhaps associate him henceforth with a different kind of existence, in a
word, that he was sure to acquire importance in her eyes from the fact of
his visit to the squire. Many a young fellow of one and twenty is as
familiar with all that money can give and as tired of luxury as a
broken-down hard liver of forty years; for this is an age of luxurious
living. But poor John had hardly ever tasted the least of those things
too familiar to the golden youth of the period to be