th a penitent glance at her, bade good-morning to the victim
of rheumatism, gave old Nancy a smart slap with the reins, and drove off
down the wood-road.

"My dear child," she said to Hilda as they jogged along, "I ought not to
have kept you waiting so long, and you tired with your ride in the cars.
But Reuel Slocum lives all alone here, and he does enjoy a little chat
with an old neighbor more than most folks; so I hope you'll excuse me."

"It is of no consequence, thank you," murmured Hildegarde, with cold
civility. She did not like to be called "my dear child," to begin with;
and besides, she was very weary and heartsick, and altogether miserable.
But she tried to listen, as the good woman continued to talk in a
cheery, comfortable tone, telling her how fond she had always been of
"Miss Mildred," as she called Mrs. Graham, and how she had the care of
her till she was almost a woman grown, and never would have left her
then if Jacob Hartley hadn't got out of patience.

"And to think how you've grown, Hilda dear! You don't remember it, of
course, but this isn't the first time you have been at Hartley's Glen. A
sweet baby you were, just toddling about on the prettiest little feet I
ever saw, when your mamma brought you out here to spend a month with old
Nurse Lucy. And your father came out every week, whenever he could get
away from his business. What a fine man he is, to be sure! And he and my
husband had rare times, shooting over the meadows, and fishing, and the
like."

They were still in the wood-road, now jolting along over ridges and
hummocks, now ploughing through stretches of soft, sandy soil. Above and
on either side, the great trees interlaced their branches, sometimes
letting them droop till they brushed against Hilda's cheek, sometimes
lifting them to give her a glimpse of cool vistas of dusky green, shade
within shade,--moss-grown hollows, where the St. John's-wort showed its
tarnished gold, and white Indian pipe gleamed like silver along the
ground; or stony beds over which, in the time of the spring rains,
little brown brooks ran foaming and bubbling down through the woods. The
air was filled with the faint cool smell of ferns, and on every side
were great masses of them,--clumps of splendid ostrich-ferns, waving
their green plumes in stately pride; miniature forests of the graceful
brake, beneath whose feathery branches the wood-mouse and other tiny
forest-creatures roamed secure; and in the very road