So she stood before him, smiling and with shining eyes, and once more the spirit of the wild rose was in her cheeks. The strange painter-man liked her! Now, behind the hedge Michael, her eldest brother, was crouching, having crept sinuous and Indian-like, down to the hedge to track the two artists. He watched with disgust what was happening, and determined to take it out of Mary later on. Michael was already disgusted because another stupid girl had arrived in the house a little while ago, and was staying a week. “Now, I must thank you,” beamed the bearded stranger, “for your beauty has inspired me, you sweet fairy. Now we’ll all go home, and you must meet my little daughter Elsie.” He picked her up and kissed her lightly and Jo kissed him back, although his face tickled, for he was kind and had said that she was a fairy. WINTER’S EVE (_To T. H. H. T._) “_Woo--oo--oo--._” Long drawn out as though the note is bubbling through water, it quavers from the dark wood yonder, seen in the dim light of the stars. From the other wood, across the grass land, a plain hoot floats back. _Woo-loo, woo-loo!_ No sound of wings beating--the flight of the wood owl is silent, his broad wings, covered with the softest down, fan the air as he proceeds through the wood. _Woo--oo! Woo--oo!_ There is mystery in the cry. All other creatures are silent, except the field mice and voles running over the ground. They cannot be seen by the human eye, but I can hear their squeaks. Again the faraway answer haunts across the darkness over the grass. The leaves have fallen long ago, they lie black and rotting on the ground. Those that drifted down when summer died have already merged into the earth whence will come the bluebells in April. But a short time since they were scurrying over the grass and among the bramble bushes, all crisp and brown. The wind caught them up and whirled them in their thousands: then came the time of wintry rains and mists. Their brittleness went, they sank into the earth.