must tell me of my dear mistress."

"Stay here," said Ferdinand, "I will bring you a chair." He was not
sorry to be seen in this amiable light. It was agreeable to bend
condescendingly to his grandmother's attached and faithful servitor, and
to be observed. There was a genuine kindliness in him, too, towards the
little withered old woman who had nursed him in his babyhood, and had
taught him his first lessons. He brought the chairs and sat down with
his old nurse at the edge of the grass-plot at some little distance from
the others.

"We will talk for a little time about my dear mistress," said Rachel,
"and then I will ask you to take me away." She leaned forward in her
chair, looking up at her companion and laying both hands upon his arm.
"I cannot stay here," she went on, in a whisper. "There are reasons.
There is a person here I have not seen for more than a quarter of a
century. You have observed that I am sometimes a little flighty." She
withdrew one of her hands and tapped her forehead.

"My dear Rachel!" said Ferdinand, in smiling protestation.

"Yes, yes," she insisted, in a mincing whisper, as if she were laying
claim to a distinction. "A little flighty. You do no credit to your
own penetration, dear Mr. Ferdinand, if you deny it. That person is the
cause. I suffered a great wrong at that person's hands. Let us say no
more. Tell me about my dear mistress."

The varnish of unconscious affectation was transparent enough for
Ferdinand to see through. The little old woman minced and bridled, and
took quaintly sentimental airs, but she was moved a great deal,
though in what way he could not guess. He sat and talked to her with a
magnificent unbending, and she took his airs as no more than his right,
and was well contented with them.

"And now, Reuben," cried Fuller, who, like everybody else, had noticed
Miss Blythe's curious behavior to Ezra and was disturbed by it--"and
now, Reuben, if thee hast got the old lady into fettle, let's have a
taste of her quality. It's maney an' maney a year now since I had a
chance of listenin' to her. Let's have a solo, lad. Gi'e us summat old
and flavorsome. Let's have 'The Last Rose o' Summer.'"

Reuben sat down, threw one leg over the other, and began to play. The
evening was wonderfully still and quiet, but from far off, the mere
ghost of a sound, came the voice of church-bells. Their tone was so
faint and far away that at the first stroke of the bow they seemed to
die, an