ly fragrance,
pushing in at the parlour window, climbing up even to the very attic.
There was a yellow jasmine over the porch at one front door, and a
woodbine at the other; the cottage had two entrances, each distinct.
But the general impression it gave, both as to sight and scent, was of
roses--nothing but roses.

"How are you, Mrs. Tod?" as a comely, middle-aged body appeared at the
right-hand doorway, dressed sprucely in one of those things Jael called
a "coat and jacket," likewise a red calamanco petticoat tucked up at
the pocket-holes.

"I be pretty fair, sir--be you the same? The children ha' not
forgotten you--you see, Mr. Halifax."

"So much the better!" and he patted two or three little white heads,
and tossed the youngest high up in the air. It looked very strange to
see John with a child in his arms.

"Don't 'ee make more noise than 'ee can help, my lad," the good woman
said to our post-boy, "because, sir, the sick gentleman bean't so well
again to-day."

"I am sorry for it. We would not have driven up to the door had we
known. Which is his room?"

Mrs. Tod pointed to a window--not on our side of the house, but the
other. A hand was just closing the casement and pulling down the
blind--a hand which, in the momentary glimpse we had of it, seemed less
like a man's than a woman's.

When we were settled in the parlour John noticed this fact.

"It was the wife, most likely. Poor thing! how hard to be shut up
in-doors on such a summer evening as this!"

It did seem a sad sight--that closed window, outside which was the
fresh, balmy air, the sunset, and the roses.

"And how do you like Enderley?" asked John, when, tea being over, I lay
and rested, while he sat leaning his elbow on the window-sill, and his
cheek against a bunch of those ever-intruding, inquisitive roses.

"It is very, very pretty, and so comfortable--almost like home."

"I feel as if it were home," John said, half to himself. "Do you know,
I can hardly believe that I have only seen this place once before; it
is so familiar. I seem to know quite well that slope of common before
the door, with its black dots of furze-bushes. And that wood below;
what a clear line its top makes against the yellow sky! There, that
high ground to the right; it's all dusky now, but it is such a view by
daylight. And between it and Enderley is the prettiest valley, where
the road slopes down just under those chestnut-trees."

"How well you seem