re too slender; a few silver
threads glistened in the soft, brown hair. Above all, the hopeless
expression of the sad and gentle face went to John's heart.

_Was_ the doctor the only man in the world who had the courage to
fight her battles for this fading, grieving woman who had been the
lovely Mary Setoun; whom John remembered so careless, so laughing, so
innocently gay?

He was relieved that she could smile as he approached to greet her.

"I did not guess you would come by the early train," she said, in glad
tones. "But, oh--you must have walked all the way from Brawnton! What
will James Coachman say?"

"I wanted a walk," said John, "and I knew you would send to meet me if
I let you know. My luggage is at the station. James Coachman, as you
call him, can fetch that whenever he will."

"And I have come to say good-bye," said Sarah, forlornly.

She watched with jealous eyes their greeting, and Lady Mary's obvious
pleasure in John's arrival, and half-oblivion of her own familiar
little presence.

When Peter had first gone to school, his mother in her loneliness had
almost made a _confidante_ of little Sarah, the odd, intelligent child
who followed her about so faithfully, and listened so eagerly to those
dreamy, half-uttered confidences. She knew that Lady Mary wept because
her boy had left her; but she understood also that when Peter
came home for the holidays he brought little joy to his mother. A
self-possessed stripling now walked about the old house, and laid down
the law to his mamma--instead of that chubby creature in petticoats
who had once been Peter.

Lady Mary had dwelt on the far-off days of Peter's babyhood very
tenderly when she was alone with little Sarah, who sat and nursed her
doll, and liked very much to listen; she often felt awed, as though
some one had died; but she did not connect the story much with the
Peter of every day, who went fishing and said girls were rather a
nuisance.

Sarah, too, had had her troubles. She was periodically banished to
distant schools by a mother who disliked romping and hoydenish little
girls, as much as she doted on fat and wheezing lap-dogs. But as her
father, on the other hand, resented her banishment from home almost as
sincerely as Sarah herself, she was also periodically sent for to take
up her residence once more beneath the parental roof. Thus her life
was full of change and uncertainty; but, through it all, her devotion
to Lady Mary never wavered.