"To pry into people's business, I think," replied the woman. "He's always about, here, there, and everywhere; one can't stir out many yards but one meets him. Saturday last, he walks right into our place without as much as knocking; and there he turns hisself round and about, looking at the rotten floor and the dripping walls, and sniffing at the bad smell that's always there, just as if he had as much right inside as a king. 'Who is your landlord?' says he, 'and does he know what a den this is?' So I told him that our landlord was Major Raynor at Eagles' Nest, and that he did know, but that nothing was done for us. He have gone, I hear, into some o' the other houses as well." The woman's tone was quite civil, but there could be no doubt that, in her independence, she was talking at Alice as the daughter of Major Raynor. "As I passed him now he asked me whether my sick children was better--just as you have, Miss Raynor. I told him they was worse. 'And worse they will be, and never better, and all the rest of you too,' says he, 'as long as you inhabit them pes-ti-fe-rus dens!'" Alice drew up her head in cold disdain, vouchsafing no further word, and feeling very angry at the implied reproach. The woman dropped a slight curtsy again, and went on her way. "How insolent they all are!" exclaimed Alice to Mr. Stane. "That Sarah Croft would have been abusive in another moment." "Their cottages are bad," returned the young man, after a pause. "Could nothing be done, I wonder, to make them a little better?" "It is papa's business, not mine," remarked Alice, in slight resentment. "And the idea of that stranger presuming to interfere! wonder what he means by it?" "I do not suppose he intends it as interference: he is looking about him by way of filling up his time: it must hang rather monotonously on his hands down here, I presume, away from his books and ledgers," remarked Mr. Stane. "It is the way of the world, Alice; people must be busy-bodies and look into what does not concern them, for curiosity's sake. Nay, just a few moments longer," he said, for she had risen to depart. "To-morrow I shall have no such pleasant and peaceful seat to linger in; I shall not have you. How delightful it all is!" And so, the disturbing element forgotten, they sat on in the balmy air, under the blue of the sky, the green foliage about them springing into life and beauty, type of another Life that must succeed our own winter, and listening to the little birds overhead warbling their joyous songs. Can none of us, grey now with care and work and years, remember just such an hour spent in our own sweet spring-time?--when all things around spoke to our hearts in one unmixed love-strain of harmony, and the future looked like a charmed scroll that could only bring intense happiness in the unrolling thereof? "Take my arm, Alice," he half whispered, when they at length rose to return.