No, I don't know either that that is the strangest. There's something stranger yet in the way we manage to go slipping and sliding along, never able to see if a precipice don't lie just ahead, and yet not troubling ourselves, but expecting things to keep on always the same. At least, that's how it is with some people. Some are over-anxious, and some don't think enough. It's right to trust God for our future; but it isn't right to be reckless and indifferent. Something lay ahead that summer, which mother and I little dreamed of. If we had—but, after all, isn't it a mercy that we don't see what's coming? Only I do think we should be wiser to live more as if things might come, so that we shouldn't need to be saying afterward with a heart-ache— "Ah! if only I'd guessed, how different I'd have behaved to him or her!" But I've got more to tell first, before coming to that sorrow. About a month after the evening when Mr. Russell and I said good-bye to one another in the lane, Mary Russell left us. She was ever so much better by that time, and Mr. Baitson was quite willing she should travel. He'd have given leave a week sooner, I believe, only mother wouldn't let Mary go. For days before she went, I was all in a quake and stir, thinking how Mr. Russell would run over to Claxton to fetch her. He wouldn't surely let her travel alone, after such an illness. But nobody seemed to think of such a thing, and not a word was spoken about it. I wanted to ask Mary if he didn't mean to come, and I couldn't, for the words stuck in my throat. It wasn't till the last evening before she left, when she and I went for a turn in the garden, after dusk fell, and I knew she couldn't see my face, that I managed to say— "Is Mr. Russell coming to take you home, Mary?" I wanted to speak careless-like, and as if it was a thing I didn't mind about either way; but I have a notion that my voice told what I was feeling. "Walter!" she said, as if surprised. "No, Kitty; why should he?" "I—don't know. I only—only thought he might," I said, stumbling over the words. "He seemed to think—at least he said—" "That would be a needless expense—no object in it," said she. "My illness has cost us enough already. Walter is hard at work, I hope—" and she made a little stop, as if she didn't feel quite sure. "Hard at work, I hope," said she again. "He ought not to think of another break before Christmas." "There's Michaelmas," I said. I saw her give a little shake of the head, dark as it was getting. "Perhaps you'll come to Claxton at Christmas?" I said; and all at once there were tears running down my face. Mary couldn't see them—and even if she did, she would only think it was because of her going away.