husband she was quite happy but her happiness was tinged with a certain tender gravity not common with in yonder churchyard lay the father who with all his faults had loved her dearly the old friend who would have showed himself friendly in a ways if she would have permitted him to do so and the little child snatched so from his loving arms all lay together there at rest what experiences too had she herself undergone in those few she had tried dependence and might have tried independence for her with her pencil were now quite sufficient to have maintained her but that her good friends at farm had forbidden the experiment and now again she was no longer her own but her husband s they would both have to work hard but labour was sweet to both of them and to live a necessity which had no terrors for them i am afraid walter said she presently that we shall find living at the a little expensive i hope that you will not your stay there upon my account could we not move in a day or two to your old lodgings at cottage my darling said walter there is this delightful peculiarity about you which alone would render vou the most charming woman in the world if you had not a thousand other attractions you always say exactly the right thing in the right place my desire of course is to please you and as it struck me that you might possibly prefer lodgings to the hotel i have actually them what at cottage a from a thorn well no because is in occupation of it that is another surprise i had for you he wrote yesterday to say that feeling he had behaved in a most selfish and way that is how he talks of having obeyed an urgent necessity in not having been present at your he means to be at to welcome you i wrote to him in your name to say delighted you would be to see his friendly face again and so i am walter i knew you would be well cottage being full it doesn t seem to strike you that there are no other in but it so that since your time � a few months after you went to rather a pretty little cottage was built at s creek the very place where our dear friend mr lost his if you remember and i have taken that for a month or two the carriage indeed turned southward as he spoke so as to leave on the right and presently drove up in front of the house in question it was new of course but being built of stone with trained over it and placed in a lovely garden it was neither crude nor staring through the open windows the sitting room looked very pretty and furnished what a naughty extravagant boy you are walter she whispered so that the maid who stood to welcome them at the door should not hear her the rent of such a palace as this will ruin us in a month he laughed in his li ht way and said not quite stepped into the little drawing room while walter was settling for the carriage and the servants were taking the luggage upstairs and looked about her the windows opened on the which she so well remembered and within everything was and pretty and above all reminded her of a husband s care her picture sent on direct from already hung upon the wall and on the table were her favourite books among them was s from english history she noticed however it was not her own copy and in the fly leaf read these words in walter s handwriting illustrated by his beloved wife he found her sitting over it as mrs afterwards described her relations to the little volume like a hen with one that is another surprise which you have discovered for yourself said walter smiling how could you could you deceive me so cried suppose i hadn t liked the poems well then i should never have told vou about them but f t jou guess the f ar used to run them down protest they were not oo iq � ii ci i v � � no i never guessed o j � m m t creek cottage ob you here ensued what ancient a love passage and did mr know about it all along when he was at for instance no i could not trust him with such a s he learnt it however soon afterwards then you were my first patron mr nay i had only the happiness of convincing messrs and son of your genius oh you here ensued again what ancient writers c this is all too delightful to last i of course to the situation generally as i said before we shall ba ruined by the mere rent of such a paradise as this but we don t pay any rent the fact is my dear though it is true i am as poor as job i have married an what do you mean walter come there is one surprise i am glad to see that you have not found out for yourself but hadn t you better take off your bonnet very good you are consumed with curiosity i see to know the whole story when your poor father lay on his death bed he extracted a promise from me it was very wise and right of him from his point of view and indeed as things have turned out from all points he had no other object in his mind but the comfort and happiness of his child and she must never think other wise you understand that she was trembling very much and it was easy for her to nod her head but she could not trust herself to speak what 