e near Meredith Manor was a model place, for Mr.
Cardew, to whom it belonged, devoted himself absolutely to it. The
houses were well drained and taken great care of. Prizes were offered
for the best gardens; consequently each cottager vied with the other
in producing the most lovely flowers and the most tempting fruits. The
village consisted entirely of Mr. Cardew's laborers and the different
servants on his estate. There were, therefore, no hardships for the
girls to witness at Meredith village. They were fond of popping in and
out of the cottages and talking to the young wives and mothers, and
playing with the babies; and they particularly enjoyed that great
annual day when Mr. Cardew threw open the grounds of Meredith to the
entire neighborhood, and when games and fun and all sorts of
amusements were the order of the hour.

Besides the people who lived in the village, there was, of course, the
rector, who had a pretty, picturesque, old brown house, with a nice
garden in one corner of the grounds. He had a good-natured,
round-faced, happy wife, and a family of four stalwart sons and
daughters. He was known as the Reverend William Tristram; and, as the
living was in the gift of the Meredith family, he was a distant
connection of Mrs. Cardew, and had been appointed by her husband to
the living of Meredith at her request.

The only playfellows the girls had ever enjoyed were the young
Tristrams. There were two boys and two girls. The boys were the
younger, the girls the elder. The boys were not yet in their teens,
but Molly and Isabel Tristram were about the same age as the young
Cardews. Molly was, in fact, a year older, and was a very sympathetic,
strong-minded, determined girl. She and her sister Isabel had not been
educated at home, but had been sent to foreign schools both in France
and Germany; and Molly, in her heart of hearts, rather looked down
upon what she considered the meager attainments of the young Cardews
and their want of knowledge of the world.

"It is ridiculous!" she was heard to say to Isabel on that very July
morning when this story opens. "Of course they are nice girls, and
would be splendid if they could do anything or knew what to do; but,
as it is, they are nothing whatever but half-grown-up children, with
no more idea of the world than has that baby-kitten disporting itself
at the present moment on the lawn."

"Oh, they're right enough," said Isabel. "They will learn by-and-by. I
don't sup