"I have just come to give you one kiss, darling, and to ask you how you have travelled, and how they all are at home?" "Oh, very nicely, thank you, dear auntie! And I have had a very good journey. It is so sweet to be at dear Fairleigh again." "You must be tired," answered her aunt, "and so our dear Hope will take you upstairs. Hope is quite like a grandchild here, and is a great comfort to us." "How lovely everything smells!" exclaimed Nellie, as she entered the fresh country bedroom, with its snowy curtains, pretty chintzes, and dainty little ornaments. Hope looked surprised. "Does it? I thought every place smelt alike." "Oh no," said Nellie. "Fairleigh smells like no other place in the world. It is the freshness, and the flowers, and the absence of smoke and dust, I suppose, so different from London." "Ah! I have never been to London." "It is nothing to be regretted," said the little London lady, who was as tired of it as she could be. Hope smiled. "You must tell me all about it, Miss Arundel." "Please call me Nellie; I feel you a sort of cousin, you know; and we shall have to get used to each other," she added, looking up shyly. "Very well," said Hope; "and now I shall leave you to get ready for tea, which I am sure you must be wanting; it is such a tedious journey. You know your way down?" "Oh yes; I shall not be very long." When Hope closed the door, and Nellie was alone, she sat down by the dressing-table, and looked round her. What a gulf lay between the beginning of this day and the end. Her sympathies and thoughts this morning were all centered in her busy home. Now everything was strange, and her grandmamma, Aunt Ruth, Fairleigh, and Hope Elliot, filled her mind. She got up again and went to the window. It looked over a piece of the kitchen garden, kept in beautiful order, then beyond was the field where her grandmamma's cows were feeding, and beyond that, the greenest of hedges, some fine old elms, and a piece of fiat, well-wooded country, which Nellie loved inexpressibly. The other window looked over a part of the flower garden, divided from the orchard by a splendid yew hedge. As she looked at the orchard, Nellie held her breath, and a strange feeling came over her. It was one mass of blossom; snowy cherry-trees, green and white pear, and rosy apple-trees mingled their branches together in such wonderful luxuriance that Nellie stood entranced. With a deep-drawn sigh, she turned at last to take off her things, and feared Hope would think she had been a long time. When she descended to the drawing room, her grandmamma rose, and taking her arm, to which she gave a loving pressure, led the way into the dining-room, while Hope followed. "You still pour out tea, grandmamma?" said Nellie, as they seated themselves. "Yes, my dear," answered Mrs. Arundel, emphatically; "and you will find it is very nice tea, and our old-fashioned bread and butter just the same as ever."