; but Mrs Seaton and her gay friends in the
drawing-room were not more unconscious of the influence for good she was
exerting over the wayward young lady than was the little maid herself.

Gertrude only vaguely realised that she was beginning to see and
estimate things differently from what she used to do--half thinking, as
her mother did, that it was because she was growing older and more
sensible. She found herself thinking, now and then, that her standard
of right was not exactly what it used to be before she had compared
opinions with Christie. In her intercourse with her own family and with
others also, she often found herself measuring their opinions and
actions by Christie's rule. But she by no means realised that her own
opinions and actions were gradually adjusting themselves to the same
rule. Yet so it was.

She liked to watch Christie. She was never weary of admiring the
patience with which she bore the changing moods of her little charge,
when illness made him fretful or exacting. Gertrude saw that she was
learning to love the little boy dearly; but she also saw that it was not
merely her love for him that made her so faithful in doing her duty to
him, nor was it to please the mother and sister or win their confidence,
for she was equally faithful in matters that could never come to Mrs
Seaton's knowledge, and Gertrude knew by experience that _her_ pleasure
was never suffered to interfere where Claude's interest or comfort was
concerned.

No; Christie lived that useful, patient life from higher motives than
these. "She does what is right because it is right," said Gertrude to
herself. She saw her quite cheerful and contented from day to day,
doing the same things over and over again, with few pleasures--with
none, indeed, unless the hour or two of reading which they managed
almost daily to get could be called such.

And yet, by a thousand tokens, Gertrude knew that she would have enjoyed
keenly many pleasures that were quite beyond her hopes--leisure, and
books, and going to school, and the power to give gifts and confer
favours. To be able to live at home, with no heavy cares pressing on
the family, would be real happiness for her. All this Gertrude gathered
from the conversations they sometimes had, from occasional remarks, and
from her intense delight when letters from home came.

And yet she did not repine in the absence of these things. She was
happy in the performance of her duties, whe