nteau
covered with a neat case of brown holland, and a little trunk to match.

She asked one of the porters to call a cab, did not disdain the shaky
and ghastly-looking conveyance which Loftus Bertram had been too proud
to use; sprang lightly into it, desired the porter to put her luggage on
the roof, and gave the address of Rosendale Manor.

"Oh, that accounts for it," said the man to his mate. "She's one of them
proud Bertram folk. I thought by the looks of her as she didn't belong
to none of the Northbury people."

The other laughed.

"She have got an eye," he said. "My word, don't it shine? Seems to
scorch one up."

"There's the 7.12 luggage train signalled, Jim!" exclaimed the other.

The men forgot the strange girl and returned to their duties.

Meanwhile, she sat back in her cab, and gazed complacently about her.
She knew the scene through which she was passing--she had looked on it
before. Very travel-stained and weary she had been then; very fresh and
keen, and all alive she felt now.

She threw open the windows of the close cab, and took a long breath of
the delicious sea air. It was a hot evening towards the middle of July,
but a slight breeze rippled the little waves in the harbor, and then
travelled up and up until it reached the girl in the dusty cab.

The Northburians were most of them out on the water. No one who knew
anything of the ways of Northbury expected to see the good folk in the
streets on an evening like this. No, the water was their highway, the
water was their pleasure-scene. Each house owned a boat, each garden
ended in steps against which the said boat was moored. It was the
tiniest walk from the supper room or the high tea-table to the little
green-painted boat, and then away to float over the limpid waves.

All the girls in Northbury could row, steer--in short, manage a boat as
well as their brothers.

There was a view of the straggling, steep little High Street from the
water; and the Bells now, in a large white boat with four oars, and
occupied at the present moment by Mrs. Bell, fat and comfortable in the
stern, Alice and Sophy each propelling a couple of oars, and the
blushing, conscious Matty in the bow, where Captain Bertram bore her
company, all saw the old cab, as it toiled up the hill in the direction
of Rosendale Manor.

"Do look at Davis's cab!" exclaimed Matty. "Look, Captain Bertram, it's
going in your direction. I wonder now, if any one has come by the train.