The village of Wensdale was snugly shut in from the rest of the world in a narrow valley. It had a little river flowing through it, and a little grey church standing on a hill, and a rose-covered vicarage, a blacksmith's forge, and a post-office. Further up the valley, where the woods began, you could see the chimneys of the White House where Squire Chelwood lived, and about three miles further on still was Dorminster, a good-sized market-town. But in Wensdale itself there was only a handful of thatched cottages scattered about here and there round the vicarage. Life was so regular and quiet there that you might almost tell the time without looking at the clock. When you heard cling, clang, from the blacksmith's forge, and quack, quack, from the army of ducks waddling down to the river, it was five o'clock. Ding, dong from the church-tower, and the tall figure of Mr Vallance climbing the hill to read prayers--eight o'clock. So on throughout the day until evening came, and you knew that soon after the cows had gone lowing through the village, and the ducks had taken their way to bed in a long uneven line, that perfect silence would follow, deep and undisturbed. In this quiet refuge Maggie's baby grew up for seven years, under the name of Mary Vallance. She was now nine years old. As she grew the qualities which had shown themselves as a baby, and made Perrin call her as "orty as a duchess," grew also, though they were kept in check by wise and loving influences. To command seemed more natural to her than to obey, and far more pleasant, and this often caused trouble to herself and others. True, nothing could be more thorough than her repentance after a fit of naughtiness, for she was a very affectionate child; but then she was quite ready on the next occasion to repeat the offence--as ready as Mrs Vallance was to forgive it. Mary was vain, too, as well as wilful; but this was not astonishing, for from a very little child she had heard the most open remarks about her beauty. Wensdale was a small place, but there were not wanting unwise people in it, who imagined that their nods and winks and whispers of admiration were unnoticed by the child. A great mistake. No one could be quicker than Mary to see them, to give her little neck a prouder turn, and to toss back her glittering hair self-consciously. So she knew by the time she was nine years old that she had beautiful hair and lovely eyes, and a skin like milk--that she walked gracefully, and that her feet and hands were smaller and prettier than Agatha Chelwood's. All this strengthened a way she had of ordering her companions about imperiously, as though she had a right to command. "No common child," she often heard people say, and by degrees she came to think that she was very _un_common indeed--much prettier and cleverer than any of the other children. "You've no call to be so tossy in your ways, Miss Mary," said Rice, the