On the following afternoon, Elsie, dreaming over her solitary cup and saucer, was startled when her parlour door opened. Mrs. Verdon, bland and smiling, came in, followed by Jamie. The boy lifted his blue eyes solemnly to Elsie's face, and something he saw there curved his lips into a smile and brought a dimple into his beautiful cheeks. As usual, he wore his sailor-suit, and this time he accepted Elsie's kiss with perfect graciousness. "We must know each other better," said Mrs. Verdon, really touched by Elsie's feeling for the child. She talked on, pleasantly and fluently. It was evidently her fancy to make much of Miss Kilner and take possession of her. Elsie accepted the invitation to dinner, partly because Mrs. Verdon was really a very pleasant person, but chiefly because her heart still clung to Jamie. On her arrival she was taken up to the top of the great house, and shown the two spacious rooms which were his own. "I does as I like up here," said Jamie grandly (grammar was occasionally forgotten). "Mammy never 'feres with me." Elsie followed him when he led the way through the door which opened into the night nursery. The first object which attracted her gaze was the statuette on the bracket over the bed. Jamie at once introduced the figure as his guardian angel. "I am never afraid at nights," the little fellow said. "Some boys is. The angel never goes to sleep; he's always awake up there. If anything wicked came, he'd just make himself large and spread his wings right over me." Jamie spoke with an air of perfect confidence which went to Elsie's heart, and her thoughts found mental expression in Browning's beautiful words:-- "Dear and great angel, wouldst thou only leave That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!" Poor lonely Elsie! She, too, desired to feel the soft, white wings close round her, shutting out all miseries of trouble and doubt, and enfolding her in their healing atmosphere of peace. CHAPTER XIV _RUSHBROOK_ "About the windings of the maze to hear The soft wind blowing. Over meadowy holms And alders, garden aisles." --TENNYSON. Arnold Wayne wrote his letter to Mr. Lennard, but the rector had already made arrangements to go to Switzerland. Mrs. Lennard, however, had decided not to accompany him; she had made up her mind to spend a couple of months with a maiden lady living at Rushbrook, and it was her wish that Elsie Kilner should be with her there. So it came to pass that Jamie and the three people who were linked together through his little person all came to sojourn within a stone's-throw of each other. Miss Ryan and Mrs. Lennard had been school-fellows and bosom friends, and the friendship had lasted through all the chances and changes of life.