he missed some one out of the three--which,
I suspect, was neither Mrs. Tod nor yet the baby.

"I like her face very much better now, David. Do you?"

It was a very curious fact, which I never noticed till afterwards, that
though there had been some lapse of time before I hazarded this remark,
we both intuitively supplied the noun to that indefinite personal
pronoun.

"A good--nay, a noble face; though still, with those irregular
features, I can't--really I can't--call her beautiful."

"Nor I."

"She bowed with remarkable grace, too. I think, John, for the first
time in our lives, we may say we have seen a LADY."

"Most certainly a lady."

"Nay, I only meant that, girl as she is, she is evidently accustomed to
what is called 'society.' Which makes it the more likely that her
father is the Mr. March who was cousin to the Brithwoods. An odd
coincidence."

"A very odd coincidence."

After which brief reply John relapsed into taciturnity.

More than once that morning we recurred to the subject of our
neighbours--that is, I did--but John was rather saturnine and
uncommunicative. Nay, when, as Mrs. Tod was removing the breakfast, I
ventured to ask her a harmless question or two--who Mr. March was, and
where he came from?--I was abruptly reproved, the very minute our good
landlady had shut the door, for my tendency to "gossip."

At which I only laughed, and reminded him that he had ingeniously
scolded me after, not before, I had gained the desired
information--namely, that Mr. March was a gentleman of independent
property--that he had no friends hereabouts, and that he usually lived
in Wales.

"He cannot be our Mr. March, then."

"No," said John, with an air of great relief.

I was amused to see how seriously he took such a trifle; ay, many a
time that day I laughed at him for evincing such great sympathy over
our neighbours, and especially--which was plain enough to see, though
he doubtless believed he entirely disguised it--for that interest which
a young man of twenty would naturally take in a very charming and
personable young woman. Ay, naturally, as I said to myself, for I
admired her too, extremely.

It seems strange now to call to mind that morning, and our
light-hearted jests about Miss March. Strange that Destiny should
often come thus, creeping like a child to our very doors; we hardly
notice it, or send it away with a laugh; it comes so naturally, so
simply, so accidentally, as it were,