"Mrs. Saville!" she exclaimed eagerly. "How is my boy?" and without waiting for an answer she seized the letter and began to devour its contents, while her husband went stooping about over the floor picking up the contents of the scattered basket and putting them carefully back in their places. He smiled to himself as he did so, and kept turning amused, tender, little glances at his wife as she stood in the uncarpeted space in the window, with the sunshine pouring in on her eager face. Mrs. Asplin had been married for twenty years and was the mother of three big children, but such was the buoyancy of her Irish nature and the irrepressible cheeriness of her heart, that she was in good truth the very youngest person in the house, so that her own daughters were sometimes quite shocked at her levity of behaviour, and treated her with gentle, motherly restraint. She was tall and thin like her husband, and he, at least, considered her every whit as beautiful as she had been a score of years before. Her hair was dark and curly; she had deep-set grey eyes and a pretty fresh complexion. When she was well and rushing about in her usual breathless fashion, she looked like the sister of her own tall girls; and when she was ill, and the dark lines showed under her eyes, she looked like a tired, wearied girl, but never for a moment as if she deserved such a title as an old or elderly woman. Now, as she read, her eyes glowed, and she uttered ecstatic little exclamations of triumph from time to time, for Arthur Saville, the son of the lady who was the writer of the letter, had been the first pupil whom her husband had taken into his house to coach, and as such had a special claim on her affection. For the first dozen years of their marriage all had gone smoothly and well with Mr. and Mrs. Asplin, and the vicar had had more work than he could manage in his busy city parish; then, alas, lung trouble had threatened; he had been obliged to take a year's rest, and to exchange his living for a sleepy little parish, where he could breathe fresh air, and take life at a slower pace. Illness, the doctor's bills, the year's holiday, ran away with a large sum of money; the stipend of the country church was by no means generous, and the vicar was lamenting the fact that he was shortest of money just when his children were growing up and he needed it most, when an old college friend, Major Saville, requested, as a favour, that he would undertake the education of his only son, for a year at least, so that he might be well grounded in his studies before going on to the military tutor who was to prepare him for Sandhurst. Handsome terms were quoted, the vicar looked upon the offer as a leading of Providence, and Arthur Saville's stay at the Rectory proved a success in every sense of the word. He was a clever boy who was not afraid of work, and the vicar discovered in himself an unsuspected genius for teaching. Arthur's progress not only filled him with delight, but