d forgotten it!' and Kate flushed as she spoke, though
whether from shame or anger it was not easy to say. As though impatient
with herself at any display of temper, she added hurriedly, 'Was it not
a piece of good fortune, Nina? Papa has left us the key of the cellar, a
thing he never did before, and only now because you were here!'

'What an honoured guest I am!' said the other, smiling.

'That you are! I don't believe papa has gone once to the club since you
came here.'

'Now, if I were to own that I was vain of this, you'd rebuke me, would not
you?'

'_Our_ love could scarcely prompt to vanity.'

'How shall I ever learn to be humble enough in a family of such humility?'
said Nina pettishly. Then quickly correcting herself, she said, 'I'll go
and despatch my note, and then I'll come back and ask your pardon for all
my wilfulness, and tell you how much I thank you for all your goodness to
me.'

And as she spoke she bent down and kissed Kate's hand twice or thrice
fervently.

'Oh, dearest Nina, not this--not this!' said Kate, trying to clasp her in
her arms; but the other had slipped from her grasp, and was gone.

'Strange girl,' muttered Kate, looking after her. 'I wonder shall I ever
understand you, or shall we ever understand each other?'

CHAPTER VIII

SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER

The morning broke drearily for our friends, the two pedestrians, at the
'Blue Goat.' A day of dull aspect and soft rain in midsummer has the added
depression that it seems an anachronism. One is in a measure prepared for
being weather-bound in winter. You accept imprisonment as the natural
fortune of the season, or you brave the elements prepared to let them do
their worst, while, if confined to house, you have that solace of snugness,
that comfortable chimney-corner which somehow realises an immense amount
of the joys we concentrate in the word 'Home.' It is in the want of this
rallying-point, this little domestic altar, where all gather together in a
common worship, that lies the dreary discomfort of being weather-bound in
summer, and when the prison is some small village inn, noisy, disorderly,
and dirty, the misery is complete.

'Grand old pig that!' said Lockwood, as he gazed out upon the filthy yard,
where a fat old sow contemplated the weather from the threshold of her
dwelling.

'I wish she'd come out. I want to make a sketch of her,' said the other.

'Even one's tobacco grows too damp to smoke in this