that particular. Her way of pouring
her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that
she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she
chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of
her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without
embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and
watched her.

"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a
conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece.

"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge.

"O! _that's_ Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't
expected him to be so young."

"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge,
started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some
day, will Mr. Londonderry."

Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine
interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him.

Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of
its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present
prosperity.

"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here,
wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry
came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something
going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr.
Moggridge did so love anything that was alive.

Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he
would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At
the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this
young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of
surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of
the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic
wandering minstrel existence had brought her to.

Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very
young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to
fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself
twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the
nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for
wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and
her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her
features for a long time to come. A face so full o