“Maybe he will be thinking of a governess for the little ones, Susie.” “It might be that,” she acknowledged in subdued tones. “And then,” she added, with again a sudden laugh, “I heard _that_ woman--no, no, I never meant to speak of her so--I heard Mrs Ainslie saying to him it would be a good thing. I would rather not have the easement than get it through her hands.” “Oh fie! Susie, fie! she would have no ill motive: you must not take such things into your head.” “It is she that makes me feel as if it were too much,” cried Susie, “coming in at all hours following me about the house. I get so tired of her that I am tired of everything. I could just dance at the sight of her: she puts me out of my senses; and always pitying me that want none of her pity! It must be kindness, I suppose,” said Susie, grudgingly; “but then I wish she would not be so kind.” After this there was a pause. The talk came to an end all at once. Mrs Ainslie and her doings dropped out of it as if she had gone behind a veil; and Susie looked in her old friend’s face, with the tenderest of inquiring looks, a question that needed not to be spoken. “No word still, no word?” she rather looked than said. “Never a word: not one, not one!” the elder woman replied. Susie put her head down on Mrs Ogilvy’s knee, and her cheek upon her friend’s hand, and then gave way to a sudden outburst of silent tears, sobbing a little, like a child. Mrs Ogilvy shed no tear. She patted the bowed head softly with her hand, as if she had been consoling a child. “The time’s very long,” she said,--“very long, and never a word.” After a while Susie raised her head. “I must, perhaps, not be very well after all,” she said, with an attempt at a smile; “or why should I cry like that? It is just that I could not help thinking and minding. It was about this time of the year----” “The fifteenth of this month,” Mrs Ogilvy said; “to-morrow, and then it’ll be fifteen years.” They sat for a little together saying nothing; and then Susie exclaimed, as if she could not contain herself, “But he’ll come back--I’m just as sure Robbie will come back! He will give you no warning; he was never one for writing. You will just hear his step on the road, and he will be here.” “That is what I think myself,” Mrs Ogilvy said. And while they were sitting together silent, there suddenly came into the silence the click of the gate and the sound of a step. And they both started, for a moment almost believing that he had come. CHAPTER IV.