hich she had seen
go up the road on the afternoon of the day of Dare's last visit, the
destination of which had filled her soul with anxious conjecture.

She did not ascertain till the following day that it had been ordered
for Mrs. Smith, of Greenacre; though, as she told Ruth, she might have
known that, as Mr. Smith was going for a holiday with Mrs. Smith, and
their pony lame in its feet; that they would have to have a fly, and
with that hill up to Greenacre she was surprised one horse was enough.

When the question of the fly had been thus satisfactorily settled, and
Mrs. Alwynn had ceased wondering whether the Smiths had gone to Tenby or
to Rhyl (she always imagined people went to one or other of these two
places), her whole attention reverted to a screen which she was making,
the elegance and novelty of which supplied her with a congenial subject
of conversation for many days.

"There is something so new in a screen, an entire screen of Christmas
cards," Mrs. Alwynn would remark. "Now, Mrs. Thursby's new screen is all
pictures out of the _Graphic_, and those colored Christmas numbers. She
has put all her cards in a book. There is something rather _passy_ about
those albums, I think. Now I fancy this screen will look quite out of
the common, Ruth; and when it is done, I shall get some of those
Japanese cranes and stand them on the top. Their claws are made to twist
round, you know, and I shall put some monkeys--you know those droll
chenille monkeys, Ruth--creeping up the sides to meet the cranes. I
don't honestly think, my dear"--with complacency--"that many people will
have anything like it."

Ruth did not hesitate to say that she felt certain very few would.

Mrs. Alwynn was delighted at the interest she took in her new work. Ruth
was coming out at last, she told her husband; and she passed many happy
hours entirely absorbed in the arrangement of the cards upon the panels.
Ruth, thankful that her attention had been providentially distracted
from the matter that filled her own thoughts, in a way that surprised
and annoyed her, sorted, and snipped, and pasted, and decided weighty
questions as to whether a goitred robin on a twig should be placed next
to a smiling plum-pudding, dancing a polka with a turkey, or whether a
congealed cross, with "Christian greeting" in icicles on it, should
separate the two.

To her uncle Ruth told what had happened; and as he slowly wended his
way to Vandon on the day fixed for t