eady at
work on a dress for Miss Sabina Hurst when she arrived. The good-natured
little woman greeted her apprentice brightly. "You are looking better,
Nancy; the walk has given you a colour." Then she reached out her hand
to a table near her, and took a little parcel from it and gave it to
Nancy.

"It is nothing," she explained, as the girl looked at it curiously.
"Open it, dear; it is a trifle for a Christmas gift. I wish it was
more."

Nancy could only say "Oh, Miss Michin--how kind!" to begin with. Then
she unwrapped the paper and saw a dainty pair of brown kid gloves with
ever so many buttons. This matter of the buttons was not unimportant in
Nancy's eyes. Had her mother given her the money, she thought, she could
never have bought gloves with more than _two_ buttons.

"This is just what I needed--oh, thank you so much," she exclaimed, when
she had looked at them.

"That was what I thought," said the dressmaker; "so now we must set to
work and get a good day."

And Nancy did work well that day, never looking up from her work, except
once to glance across to the Post-office at the time she knew Benny Dodd
usually came out to go to the church. She could not see Fred, so it was
some pleasure to her to look at the small boy who blew the organ for
him.

But Benny did not perform that office for the young musician on this
day, for Fred Hurst had gone to London that morning, summoned thither by
a letter from Messrs. Hermann and Scheiner, music publishers. The marked
success of "Winged Love" had disposed these gentlemen to make the young
composer a good offer for his next song. The more immediate cause of
their determination was the fact that Senor Flores had chosen to sing
"Winged Love" at the last Saturday afternoon concert at St. James'
Hall, and its reception had been such as to establish a certain sale for
songs from the same hand. "Who is this Fred Hurst?" people in London
were asking.

Miss Sabina, in her showy drawing-room up at the Manor Farm, thought
over the event all day in her own critical way, and predicted evil as
the result. There was an old Broadwood grand piano in the room where she
sat, covered with a pile of old music--Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn,
and all the composers whose music Miss Sabina disliked. This music had
belonged to Fred's mother, a fair and unfortunate creature, whose own
story I shall some day write. Miss Sabina's performances upon the
pianoforte were limited to such compositi