e couldn't take a bit of interest in one's own visitors!
There's the drawin'-room a-ringin', and the dinin'-room will be wantin'
its tea. Stir the fire, Joe, and hold the toast whilst I answer the
bell. Where's that Polly a-gone to, I wonder?"

In spite of her husband's disdainful comments, Mrs. Jackson's surmises
were not altogether groundless; and if she had peeped into her back
sitting-room that evening, when Isobel was in bed, she might have seen
her visitor slowly and with much care and thought composing a letter.
Sheet after sheet of notepaper was covered, and then torn up, for the
writer's efforts did not seem to satisfy her, and she leaned her head on
her hand every now and then with a weary air, as if she had undertaken a
distasteful task.

"I do not ask anything for myself," wrote Mrs. Stewart at last. "That
you should care to meet me, or ever become reconciled to me, is, I know,
beyond all question. My one request is that you will see your
grandchild. She is now nearly eleven years of age, a thorough Stewart,
tall and fair, and with so strong a resemblance to her father that you
cannot fail to see the likeness. I have done my utmost for her, but I am
not able to give her the advantages I should wish her to have, and
which, as her father's child, I feel it is hard for her to lack. She is
named Isobel, after your only daughter, the little sister whose loss my
husband always spoke of with so much regret, and whom he hoped she might
resemble. You would find her truthful, straightforward, obedient, and
well-behaved, and in every respect worthy of the name of Stewart. It is
with the greatest difficulty that I bring myself to ask of you any
favour, but for the sake of the one, dear to us both, who is gone, I beg
that you will at least see my Isobel, and judge her for yourself."

She addressed the letter to Colonel Stewart, the Chase, sealed it,
stamped it, and took it herself to the post. For a moment she stood and
hesitated--a moment in which she seemed almost inclined to draw back
after all; she turned the letter over doubtfully in her hand, went a
step away, then suddenly straightening herself with an air of firm
determination, she dropped it into the pillar-box and returned to her
lodgings. Going upstairs to the bedroom, she tenderly lifted the soft
golden hair, and looked at the quiet, sleeping face of her little girl.

"He cannot fail to like her," she said to herself. "It was the only
right thing to do, an