‘It doesna become you to speak ill o’ the lassie as soon as her back’s turned,’ said Miss Lindsay; and to this rebuke Margaret vouchsafed no reply. Meanwhile Laura was trying to realize that once more a great change had come into her life. The comfortable, monotonous life of Mr. Lindsay’s house was already for her a thing of the past. What the future had in store for her she had no means of guessing. A cousin of her mother’s, who had married a Mr. Crosby, had offered her a home, and she had accepted the offer. Of Mr. Crosby she only knew that he was a coal merchant, and that he lived at Richmond Villa, Brighton. He might be a poor man, or he might be well-to-do; though from the fact that Mrs. Crosby had accepted Laura’s proposal to pay her sixty pounds a year for her board and lodging, it might be supposed that the Crosbys were not rich. ‘Whatever they are like,’ said Laura to herself, ‘my life can’t be more dull with them than it has been for the last three years. And if I don’t like them, I can always go away again.’ But fate had decreed that in both of these points Laura was to be disappointed. The girl’s heart sank within her as the cab stopped at ‘Richmond Villa,’ which was, in fact, nothing more than a shabby, stucco-fronted cottage. The crying of a baby reached her ears before she had time to raise the knocker; and no sooner had she done so than she became conscious that two dirty children were peering at her from the window at her left hand. Mrs. Crosby was a large, flabby, good-natured woman, who seemed incapable of being injuriously affected by any domestic troubles whatever. She was always in a muddle, always undecided, always unpresentable in appearance, and always contented. Her husband, on the contrary, was a little, sharp-eyed, foxy-haired man with a rasping, disagreeable voice, and an uncertain temper. Each of them had, without knowing it, drawn a prize in the lottery of marriage. Either Mr. or Mrs. Crosby would have driven any other man or woman mad in a week; but they got on together tolerably well. ‘You are very welcome, Miss Mowbray,’ he said to Laura that evening, ‘if you can put up with the discomfort of this house. I’m used to it, and I don’t mind; but with you it may be different.’ Laura did not know what to say in answer to this speech; but Mrs. Crosby remarked with the utmost composure: ‘Law, Mr. Crosby, how can you say so? I’m sure everything’s very comfortable, though at present a little unsettled. But you must never mind Mr. Crosby, my dear. All men grumble and find fault; and if you just let them alone, it never does anyone any harm.’ Life at Richmond Villa was certainly uneventful; but very much to her own surprise Laura found that it interested her. It was the first time she had ever formed one of a family circle; and though the children were by no means attractive, they amused her, and pleased her by coming to her with their little wants and cares, their joys and sorrows.