"Bob is three years your junior, Rose," said her mother. "At your age, you ought not to be shy. Why could you not talk to the Vicar as well as Mavis?" Rose hung her head and made no response, whilst her cousin felt very uncomfortable. Mavis was fully conscious, by this time, that her aunt did not approve of her, that she regarded her with critical eyes, and that she was always displeased if any one noticed her more than her cousins. And these facts prevented her from being as happy as she otherwise would have been at the Mill House. She was never quite at her ease in her aunt's presence, and certainly never at her best. And yet, Mrs. John had no intention of being otherwise than just and kind to her little niece, and was vexed when she observed that Mavis' affection for her uncle was deepening day by day, whilst she held more and more aloof from herself. "Aunt Lizzie doesn't like me," Mavis thought frequently, and she would wonder if she could have possibly done anything to evoke her aunt's displeasure. "I try to please her, but I see she doesn't care for me, and I'm afraid I don't care for her—much." CHAPTER VI ROSE IN TROUBLE AUTUMN had given place to winter, a wet, depressing winter with rain and westerly gales, and the flat country between W— and Oxford was flooded. There had been almost incessant rain for weeks now. And Mavis, as she sat at the little table by her bedroom window engaged in writing a letter to her mother, which she was taking great pains to spell correctly, considering every word, glanced at the leaden sky every now and again, in the hope of seeing a break in the clouds. "I don't think we ever had such bad weather in London," she reflected. "But perhaps I didn't notice it so much there. What will happen, I wonder, if the floods go on increasing? We seem almost surrounded by water as it is." By-and-by, Rose came to the door, wanting to know if her cousin had nearly finished her letter. "Yes," Mavis replied, "I'm ending up now. Come in, Rosie." So Rose came in. The two little girls had become very friendly by this time, for, though there was a difference of two years in their ages, in many ways Mavis appeared as old if not older than her cousin, no doubt because she had always been to a great extent in her mother's confidence. Rose had lived her twelve years in a home where she had had every comfort. Whilst Mavis had known times when she and her mother could not have told from what source the wherewithal was to come to provide them with the necessaries of life, and yet God had never allowed them to want, He had given them always sufficient for their needs. "What is the matter, Rose?" said Mavis, as, having put away her writing materials, she turned her attention to her cousin, who stood at the window with an expression of gloom on her face.