Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint suggestion of relief. Miriam fled to her as she sat with the garden light on her hair, her lingering flush of distress rekindled by her amusement, her protective responsible smile beaming out through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind her painstaking life at the school was a country home, a farm somewhere far away. Of course it was dreadful for her to be a farmer’s daughter. She evidently knew it herself and said very little about it. But her large red hands, so strange handling school-books, were comforting; and her holland apron with its bib under the fresh colouring of her face--do you like butter? A buttercup under your chin--brought to Miriam a picture of the farm, white amidst bright greenery, with a dairy and morning cock-crow and creamy white sheep on a hillside. It was all there with her as she sat at table reading “The Lamplighter.” The sound of her broad husky voice explaining to Miss Jenny had been full of it. But it was all past. She too had come to Banbury Park. She did not seem to mind Banbury Park. She was to study hard and be a governess. She evidently thought she was having a great chance--she was fifteen and quite “uncultured.” How could she be turned into a governess? A sort of nursery governess, for farms, perhaps. But farms did not want books and worry. Miriam wanted to put her back into her farm, and sometimes her thoughts wearily brushed the idea of going with her. Perhaps, though, she had come away because her father could not keep her? The little problem hung about her as she sat sweetly there, common and good and strong. The golden light that seemed to belong specially to her came from a London garden, an unreal North London garden. Resounding in its little spaces were the blatterings and shouts of the deaf and dumb next door. 4