"And please," continued the girl, her heart now jumping into her mouth, "uncle would be so much obliged if you could cash this for him." Dawson glanced at the cheque. "Of course, miss," he said. "How will you have it?" "In gold, please," said Annie. "I can give you fifteen pounds in gold, miss. Will you take the rest in a five-pound note?" Annie agreed. Two or three minutes later, with her little parcel of meat put into a basket for her, and twenty pounds in her pocket, she was riding towards the post-office. There she dismounted, and asking for a sheet of the best note-paper, wrote a line to Lady Lushington. It ran as follows: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Dear Lady Lushington,--Thank you ever so much for your most kind invitation, which I take pleasure in accepting. My uncle is so glad that you have asked me, and I thank you now in his name as well as my own. I shall be in Paris on Tuesday night, so will you kindly send your maid, as you suggest, to meet me at the railway station? Please give my love to Mabel.--Yours very sincerely and gratefully, Annie Brooke." When the letter was finished it was put into a separate envelope from the one which had already been written to Mabel, and then the two were addressed and stamped and dropped by Annie's own hand into the box of the village post-office. How excited she felt, and how triumphant! Yes--oh yes--she had surmounted every difficulty now, for long before her theft with regard to the cheque had been discovered she would have left the country. She could be agreeable now to every one. She could smile at her neighbours; she could talk to the village children; and, above all things, she could and would be very, very nice to Uncle Maurice. When she arrived back at the Rectory such a rosy-faced, bright-eyed, pretty-looking girl walked into Mrs Shelf's presence that that good woman hardly knew her. The sulky, disagreeable, selfish Annie of that morning had vanished, and a girl who was only too anxious to do what she could for every one appeared in her place. "I met Dr Brett, Mrs Shelf--wasn't it a piece of luck?--and sent him on to see Uncle Maurice. Has he been, Mrs Shelf?" "Oh yes, my dear, he has; and I am glad to tell you he thinks that your dear uncle, with care and quiet, will soon be himself again. The doctor thinks a great lot of your being here, Annie, and says that your company will do your uncle more good than anything else in the world. He wants cheering up, he says, and to have his mind distracted from all his parish work. I know you will do what you can--won't you?" "Of course I shall," said Annie. "And here are the things from the butcher's," she added.