"Well," said Mrs Johnston, "you say you believe things will come right. I've not been at all of that way of thinking. I don't pretend that I have. It has been, my idea that things were much more likely to go wrong than right. I have found it so in life. But there, what ever possessed you, in the midst of all your anxieties, to write me a little note last night and say that you would come to see me this afternoon, and that perhaps you'd come about tea time, and that perhaps Mercy would make some of her scones, for you could never forget how delicious they tasted last time? I can tell you, Miss Angela, I awoke this morning feeling as cross and as bad and as sour as an old woman could feel, for I was aching from head to foot with the rheumatism, and I was thinking how lonely it was not to have chick nor child belonging to me, and Miss Palliser, who had her faults, poor thing, but who knew my ways, gone to America, and had it not been for your note, I don't know what I should have done, but that cheered me, and I got downstairs. But what do you think?--even with the hope of seeing you, I couldn't help having the grumps. But to go on with my story, I was grumbling and grumbling inside me--not that I said a word, for there wasn't any one to say it to; Mercy was in the kitchen, with her heart in her month at the thought of seeing you, and I was by the window wondering how I could pass the hours and bear the pain in my back and down my legs, when there came a loud, impertinent sort of ring at the bell of the front door, and I wondered who that could be. I heard Mercy parleying with some one in the hall, and after a bit, in she walked and said that a girl wanted to see me, and that she knew you. Oh, dear, I thought for sure she'd come to tell me that you couldn't come, and the same thought must have been in Mercy's mind, for her eyes looked quite dazed. So I said: `Mercy, show her in,' and in she came, as awkward a creature as you could clap your eyes on. Will you believe me, my dear, she wasn't more than half inside the room before she bumped against my little table with my precious silver ornaments, and knocked some of them over, and it was a providence that they weren't injured. Then, she came right in front of me, and asked me if I didn't want some one to read to me. Never was there a queerer creature. When I questioned her whether she had brought a message from you, she said she hadn't, and that she came herself, to see me, and that she was living in Mrs Hogg's cottage--Mary Hogg's cottage; that widow that I have so often told you about, the one who does my washing, by the way. You may be quite sure I was pretty well excited and angry when she said that, and I sent her away double quick; but it's my certain sure opinion that she is the very girl you are looking for. I am as sure of it as that my name is Margaret Johnston." CHAPTER THIRTY. FOUND AT LAST.