Elinor, with a laugh, "to a little
country mouse like me that has never seen anything. There is always
something going on, and their slang way of speaking is certainly very
amusing if it is not at all dignified, and they have such droll ways of
looking at things. All so entirely different! Don't you know, John,
sometimes in one's life one longs for something to be quite different. A
complete change, anything new."

"If that is what you long for, no doubt you will get it, Elinor."

"Well!" she cried, "I have had the other for three-and-twenty years,
long enough to have exhausted it, don't you think? but I don't mean
to throw it over, oh, no! Coming back to mamma makes the arrangement
perfect. Probably in the end it is the old life, the life I was brought
up in that I shall like best in the long run. That is one thing of being
well brought up. Phil will laugh till he cries when I tell him of your
description of me as a well-brought-up girl."

John set his teeth as he walked or rather stumbled along by her side,
catching in the roots of the trees as he had never done before, and
swearing under his breath. Her flutter of talk running on, delighted,
full of laughter and softness, as if he had fully declared his
satisfaction and was interested in every detail, kept John in a state
of suppressed fury which made his countenance dark, and almost took the
sight from his eyes. He did not know how to escape from that false
position, nor did she give him time, she had so much to say. Mrs.
Dennistoun looked anxiously at the pair as they came up through the
copse to the level of the cottage. There were no enclosures in that
primitive place. From the copse you came straight into the garden with
its banks of flowers. She was seated near the cottage door in a corner
sheltered from the sun, with a number of books about her. But I don't
think she had read anything except some portions of the lessons in the
morning service. She had been sitting with her eyes vaguely fixed upon
the horizon and her hands clasped in her lap, and a heavy shadow like an
overhanging cloud upon her mind. But when she heard Elinor's voice
approaching so gay and tuneful her heart rose a little. John evidently
could have had nothing very bad to say. Elinor had been satisfied
with the morning. Mrs. Dennistoun had expected to see them come back
estranged and silent. The conclusion she drew was entirely satisfactory.
After all John must have been moved solely by gene