She, whose lineage went back to Oliver Cromwell and Miles Standish and a Scotch lord, she to be called second-class by Clarice Percy was too much. Who were the Percys? she’d like to know. “Nobodies! Sprung from a white slave! Talk to me of F. F. V.’s, as if I didn’t know all about ’em. Second-class, indeed! It makes me so mad!” and Miss Hansford banged the door so hard that Martha Ann, who had evoked the storm and was washing dishes in the sink, dropped a china saucer in her fright and broke it. After this, Miss Hansford’s antipathy to the Percys increased, and not even the grey silk Clarice had selected mollified her completely. Still, it did a good deal towards it, and she gradually became more reconciled to the thought of the engagement. “I s’pose Paul must marry sometime,” she said, “and if it was anybody but Clarice, I’d try to be glad, but try as I will I can’t abide the Percys.” CHAPTER VI. ELITHE’S PHOTOGRAPH. The May days were growing longer and warmer. Many of the cottages were open and there was a feeling of summer everywhere, when suddenly the weather changed. The sea looked green and angry, the wind blew cold across it from the east, bringing a drenching rain which, beginning in the early morning, lasted through the day with a persistency which precluded anything like intercourse with the outside world unless it were necessary. Miss Hansford had been alone all day, with no one to speak to but her cat, Jim. To him and to herself she had talked a good deal of the past, the present and the future. The present was dreary enough, with the thick fog on the water and the steady fall of rain, which increased rather than diminished as the night came on. It was some little diversion to carry pans and pails to places where the roof leaked, and to crowd bits of sacking against the doors, under which pools of water were finding their way. When this was done and darkness had settled down and her lamp was lighted, she began to wonder what she should do next to pass the time. “I ain’t hungry, but it’ll take my mind if I get myself and Jim some supper. I b’lieve I’ll make griddle cakes. Paul used to be so fond of ’em when he was a boy. I wish he was here to-night,” she said, as she replenished her fire in her small kitchen and busied herself with her preparations for her evening meal. “I shall sit here by the stove where I can lift the cakes from the griddle to my plate and save steps,” she thought, and, bringing a small round table or stand from the dining room, she covered it with a towel, placed upon it a plate, a cup and a saucer and a dish of milk for Jim, who was badly spoiled, and was to take his supper with her. The cakes were ready to bake and still she sat in her rocking chair, with her feet on the stove hearth and her head thrown back, listening to the rain beating dismally against the windows and wondering why she was so much more lonesome than common.