"After all, we're but blind creatures," murmured Mrs. Valentine, mechanically knitting, while she glanced backwards upon certain passages in her own early life. "If I had been allowed to choose for myself, I should have had a very different story. Not a happy one, either. I couldn't guess then. And now I'm wanting to choose again for Prue . . . Perhaps not to choose altogether—only to wish we had not come to live just here . . . Yet if that is the very thing God meant for her? How do I know? We didn't come—knowing—and perhaps He has just guided us to this very spot." They had not yet seen Mr. Kelly. On the day before their arrival, he had gone off for his annual holiday; and the exact date of his expected return was not known to them. Still, it would be soon; and Prue must see him. Mr. Valentine had left his card at the Vicarage, and Mr. Kelly would therefore know where they were. "And then—" sighed Mrs. Valentine almost audibly. "And then—" She looked up, to find Prue near at hand; Prue, with a faint colour in her cheeks, a faint indefinable glow and brightness over her sometimes too impassive face. It was like a dim imprisoned light, shining outward from within. "If he were to see Prue now, he would think her as taking as ever," Mrs. Valentine thought. She, like Prue, always believed that Mr. Kelly had cared, and that some hindrance had come between. "What was that sigh for, mother?" "Did I sigh, my dear?" Prue sat down, unoccupied; a rare state of things. Her thoughts were too busy to allow the hands to work. "No letter yet from Lettice," she said, becoming aware of a solicitous glance. Lettice had not been the subject of her cogitations. "How long is it since you heard?" "One has to reckon. A good many weeks. Nothing since the little scrawl written the morning after her birthday. I fancied the tone of it unhappy, and I wrote again soon; but she has never answered." "I wish we could get hold of the child." "I wish it too. She refuses invitations so persistently—yet I always feel sure that she does wish to see us again. There is some obstacle in the way. Not money, of course; for Dr. Bryant is well off; but something. Is it Mrs. Bryant?" "Lettice never seems very fond of her. But after all we don't know much." Then a pause. "Mother, Mr. Kelly has come home. We shall hear him preach next Sunday." Prue had never spoken more composedly. "He used to preach well." "I have heard no sermons equal to his." Mrs. Valentine could have sighed again. "How do you know he has come back?" "I saw him—going in at the front door. He did not see me." "You are sure you would know him again?" Prue's face exhibited a gleam of amusement. "Know him!" she repeated. "It is a good many years since you both met. He must be changed." "No, not much. But perhaps I am! If he saw me—I don't know whether he looked, but if he did, he passed me by. Am I so altered?"