I could see her at the window, certainly. I also frequently passed her mother and herself in the street, or on The Terrace, or along the Prebend's Walk, when I was taking an airing abroad with dog Catch at my heels; yet, I don't know how it was, but I invariably chanced to be on the opposite side of the street, or road, or terrace, whenever I thus passed them. I never failed to receive the timid little bow and smile from Min, with a rosy heightening of her complexion the while--to which I had now got so accustomed that, should I have been debarred from their receipt, I would have considered myself very hardly used and felt a morbid inclination to go mad and drown myself. But, Min's bow was hardly sufficient to introduce me to her mother, even if people could be introduced from opposite sides of roads. Thus it was that I remained a stranger to Mrs Clyde, and did not have a chance of meeting her daughter and talking to her, as I might have done if I could but have visited her at home. I never was able to have a word with her now, never could hear her darling voice repeat my name in those soft accents I loved so well. It was very hard--very hard, indeed! You see, I had ample reasons, beyond the requirements of mere social etiquette, for wishing to know Mrs Clyde. Our suburb, you must know, was an extremely quiet place--"remote, unfriended, solitary, slow." Although everybody knew everybody, who happened to be anybody at all, there was not much of current sociability and party giving. We were not sociable. On the contrary, we were a very humdrum lot; rising early and going to town to our business and daily toil--such of us as had any sort of business to attend to--and coming back at a fixed regular hour. We were in the habit of having our respective dinners and teas, and, mayhap, suppers, at certain appointed times and seasons--also duly regulated--and subsequently going to bed, to recruit for the same routine on the morrow, without any excitements, or renovation and destruction of tissue worth speaking of. A "tea-party" was quite a sensation in the parish of Saint Canon's-- equivalent to one of the queen's garden fetes. Beyond school treats and working parties, to which latter only the clergy and Lady Dorcases were admitted, and the anniversary of Christmas, when we sometimes _did_ indulge a little in wholesome but subdued gaiety, we went on from year's beginning to year's end without balls, or dinners, or dances, or any of those resources which fashionable people have for killing time and keeping up acquaintanceship.