, and very genuine tears were on her own cheeks. They were a very
demonstrative pair, and, as we should say in these days, "gushed" over
each other, but real love did underlie the fanciful expression of it;
and Miss Falconer looked on Charlotte with the pride that a modeller in
plastic clay, looks upon the work of his hands, and remembers how
carefully every detail has been wrought out, and how, in spite of a
little flaw here and there, the result is satisfactory.

Joyce was watching for her father at the door of Mr. Scott's farm, and
came running down the garden between the lavender bushes and high
shrub-fuschias, which were glowing scarlet in the sunshine.

The squire waved his hand to the farmer's wife, who, crippled with
rheumatism, could not leave her seat in the porch to come towards him. A
farmboy lifted Joyce's box to the back seat, where she soon mounted
with a quick, alert spring, and then, with a shilling handed to the boy,
the squire drove off.

Joyce's heart sank a little when they turned in at the gates of Barley
Wood.

"Are you coming in with us, father?"

"No, no, my dear; I must get back as fast as I can. It is a good many
miles for Mavis at a stretch."

They drew up at the door, and an old servant answered the ringing of the
bell, which Joyce had jumped down to pull by a handle, made of a deer's
foot. The servant's face was not very pleasant, and a forbidding looking
woman called out:

"Company! yes, there's nothing but company. There's no rest from it."

The boxes were taken down, and the squire, unwilling to prolong the
parting, which he felt more keenly than he cared to own, waved his whip,
and saying "Good bye, my Sunshine, good-bye," drove off.

"This way," the woman said, passing across the hall and opening the door
of a low, pretty room, sweet with that scent of rose leaves and
lavender, which always belonged to the atmosphere of a country house
long ago. It was an aroma in which many scents blended, with no very
great strength--a fragrance which dwells in the memory amongst the
pleasant things of early days.

There was nothing very striking about Barley Wood; it was simply a
pretty country residence--a place to live and die in. There was an air
of tranquility about it, and an absence of anything like fashion or
show, which was very refreshing.

Miss Frowde rose to greet the two girls, and, saying that Mrs. More
would see them after dinner, she led them to two rooms at the back of