lodgings somewhere--she didn't know where--and her aunt had bought
some of her furniture. There was an old table with claw-feet, among
other things.

"Was the aunt living now?" Elsie asked.

"Oh, yes; she was living at Winchfield," the girl answered. But she was
deaf and rather cross, and it was a hard matter to make her understand
anything. "Mrs. Tryon, Stone Cottage, Winchfield, near the railway
station."

Elsie wrote the address in her note-book, and left Dashwood Street with
hope renewed.

"We are getting nearer to the goal," she said brightly. "You see now
that Mrs. Penn is a real person."

"And if Mrs. Penn is real, then Meta and Harold and Jamie are real
also," Miss Saxon replied. "Yes, I think you have proved that they are
not mere phantoms."

"And that is proving a good deal in a world which is fall of
uncertainties," Elsie cried. "Don't laugh at me, Miss Saxon; I hear a
voice calling me to go on! You cannot hear it, I know, but you must
trust to my ears."

"I will trust you," Miss Saxon answered, with an admiring glance at the
slight erect figure by her side. Elsie was a little above middle height,
and she walked with the step of a woman who has been accustomed to an
out-of-door life, as naturally graceful as the swaying of the grasses on
a hillside.

All Saints' Street was still warm with the morning sunshine when they
came back to their door, and Elsie ran upstairs to her rooms with a
light step. Difficulties and trials were to come, but she had made a
beginning.

CHAPTER IV

_MRS. TRYON_

"Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern--
Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn."
--BROWNING.

"A Letter will not do," said Elsie to her counsellor. "If Mrs. Tryon is
a cross person she won't take the trouble to answer a letter. So I shall
go to Winchfield."

"Well, it isn't a long journey," Miss Saxon replied, "and the weather is
lovely. A glimpse of the country won't do you any harm."

The glimpse of the country did not do any harm, but it awakened a host
of sleeping memories.

When she got out of the train at the quiet station there was the
familiar breath of wallflowers in the air. It was a flower which her old
father had loved, and she seemed to see him walking along the garden
paths, gathering a nosegay for his wife in the early morning. Birds were
singin