"Ah! the whity-brown legion of little horrors, who like a swarm of hornets literally drove you out of Laurel Bank, and compelled you to take refuge in Grosvenor Square! I suppose that they have been undergoing the process of taming, at which my aunt is so famous, and that Johnny now does not scratch out any one’s eyes, and that Lyddie may be trusted in a store-room full of treacle and sugar. I should think your mother a first-rate hand at bringing up children, judging from the charming specimen before me!" Flora neither smiled nor blushed at the flattery now. "But tell me how they all appeared when you were last at Laurel Bank." Then, indeed, the colour rose to Flora’s pale cheek, and it was with an appearance of some embarrassment that she replied, "I have not been there since you were there, on the day of my marriage." Ada suppressed the exclamation of astonishment that was upon her tongue, for she saw that its utterance would give pain. "My dear husband has been so much engaged--of course I could not leave him--it is so difficult sometimes to make arrangements--but I hope soon--" Flora stopped short, for her lips were not accustomed to utter an absolute untruth. "How your mother must be longing to see you! I should not have thought that she could have lived so long without you!" "Words cannot express how I long to see her!" exclaimed Flora, with tears in her eyes. "I think that it might be managed in some way. If you could not visit Wingsdale, she might come to London--" Flora looked so uneasy at the proposition that Ada changed the conversation in pure good nature, wondering much in her mind what could have occurred to separate a parent so much beloved from so dutiful a daughter. "I hope that you have not given up your pen, Flora; that you don’t think that your talented husband the author does enough in that line for you both?" "Oh, I write a little sometimes," said Flora, in a tone of indifference. "I never read anything so pretty as your hymns. Do you know, Flora," Ada added more gravely, "that I have often thought over the verses which you wrote during my first visit to Wingsdale, after we heard that solemn sermon from Mr. Ward on the subject of the sower and his seed!" "I had almost forgotten them," said Flora. "And the sermon too?" "Well--I have heard so many since." "Ah! that is the thing, you have lived in such an atmosphere of piety." "Oh, don’t speak so!" cried Flora hurriedly.