domestic, is certainly to add insult to injury. Sarah naturally felt herself insulted, but she said no word.

Breakfast being quite over, Mr. Pettifer rose, and, with a smiling adieu to Nora, left the room, and very speedily left the house. "It is quite as well," said Mrs. Pettifer, when she and her niece were alone. "His conduct is just abominable, it is not even respectable. Still, we shall have the day to ourselves. We will take an early luncheon, you and I, and then we will go into the town and see Mr. Salisbury, and put things in train, at least. I shall give him strict orders to complete everything as quickly as possible; for I shall not feel easy now till I have made my will and signed it, with all due attestation, and whatever is required. Then, if we are not too tired, we may have a sandwich and a glass of wine at Cooke's, and take the rail to Ashford. I want to see old Mrs. Morrison. And we will come back as suits us, to a meat-tea, and leave out dinner altogether."

"Very well, ma tante. It is a beautiful day. At what time will you order the carriage?"

"I shall not go in the carriage at all, Nora. I do not wish any one to be aware of our business in Bradfield, and servants always contrive to get an inkling of things. We will walk to the Pentangle, and take a car from there to the Town Hall, then it is not many yards to Mr. Salisbury's office. I only hope he may be in, and disengaged; it would have been better to make an appointment."

As Mrs. Pettifer performed no more maternal duties than she could avoid, it was quite easy to leave the little one in her nurse's charge. Miss Pettifer, like the hero of "Great Expectations," was "brought up by hand." When our old friend Mrs. Lupin heard of the arrival of Sarah's baby, she lifted up her hands and exclaimed, "To think of Sarah Lane having a baby! It is too ridiculous! What will she do with it!" And when she was told by Martha Grice, who came St. Oswald's way every now and then, that the child was to be dry-nursed, she replied, "A good thing too! If Sarah must bring unfortunate infants into the world, the least kindness she can bestow upon them is not to nurse them herself. Children mostly take after their fathers; but mother's milk gives mother's nature, and it is best that such a nature as Sarah's should not be transmitted to posterity. Though I always say a woman who can't or won't nurse her babies in the natural way is not qualified for matrimony." So little Minnie was fed on "tops and bottoms," and Revalenta, and Prepared Flour, which was a very good thing for her; for Mrs. Lupin, though not entirely charitable in her conclusions, was quite right in her premises. The less Baby Minnie resembled her mamma, the better it would be for

her. As to her papa, it was to be hoped she would “take after” him as little as possible.

Sarah and Nora reached Mr. Salisbury's office shortly before noon, and there they met with their first disappointment. The lawyer's confidential clerk saw the ladies, and deplored the absence of his superior. Mr. Salisbury had started that morning for London, on very important business-he would not be back before the beginning of the week. Could he do anything for Mrs. Pettifer?

But Mrs. Pettifer had no idea of entrusting her business to a clerk, however reliable. Indeed, as she really wished Mr. Salisbury's advice in the first place, she could not easily give the proper instructions. "We had better make an appointment, my dear," she said to Nora. "Will next Tuesday morning at this hour suit Mr. Salisbury, do you suppose, Mr. Grey? Tell him that my business is urgent, and must not be postponed a day longer than is absolutely needful."

"I am disappointed! I am vexed!" said Sarah, when they came out of doors again, rubbing her nose, on which a large "Bradfieldblack" had just settled. "I don't feel a bit inclined to go to Ashford, now; Mrs. Morrison will be out, too; I feel as if she would! And I don't want to go home again, just yet, I am so nervous and unsettled. I wish we lived near some pretty country place, where we could go and spend a few hours quietly. Come into Cooke's, and let us talk it over."

Nora felt how much her aunt was improved. A year or two ago she would certainly have vented her annoyance upon her niece, and have doubted the accuracy of Mr. Grey's statements. Cooke's "Ladies'-room" was nearly empty, so Nora and her aunt had a quiet nook to themselves, where they could talk comfortably. "There is Prior's Spa?" suggested Nora, taking up the railway guide, which lay beside her plate.

"Too far! too far!" replied Sarah; "and the trains do not run frequently."

“Oh, ma tante, I know what I should like; but I am afraid it would not suit you. The trains are sure to be all right, whichever we should be there in half an hour."

station we go from;

"Be where, child? I don't much mind where I go, I am so restless and unnerved."

"I should like to go to Wolverham, ma tante. It is not a pretty place; but Gertrude is there with her married cousin, Lettice Burton; and Letty has her first baby-such a beauty, they say! I promised Gertie that I would go over some day while she stayed at Merrilees, and we might go together now."

"So we might," returned Sarah, slowly. "Yes, Wolverham will do as well as any other place, and we shall have an object in view.

And if I felt quite inclined, I might take a car and drive a mile or so out on the Great Moor Road, and spend an hour with Mrs. Peglar. She was my mother's friend, and I have known her all my life. She wrote to me when my baby was born; she will be glad to see me; and she is certain to be at home, because she never goes out." "That will do charmingly, ma tante, if you think so. There is a train to Wolverham at 1.20 from the station close by. We could take that, and be at our journey's end before two o'clock; that is to say, at the end of the railway journey; it will take us another half hour, I suppose, to get to Merrilees. You would like to see Letty's baby, would you not?"

"I will go with you, of course, to Merrilees; then you can stay with your friends while I pay my visit. We will arrange about meeting again as we go along; we had better be home before it is quite dark."

"Oh, certainly! and there are so many trains that we can choose our time. Shall we stay here till it is time to go?"

"No; let us go to Townley's, and I will buy your grey silk at once. It is late in the season, or else we might both get new parasols; these are so shabby, especially yours."

"Nobody minds a shabby parasol in September, ma tante! But as to the dress, I thank you greatly. Shall it be sent at once to the dressmaker's?"

The dress was soon bought, for there was no question of choice, Nora having fallen in love with that particular lustrous grey silk several weeks before. Sarah, however, added a very pretty cerisecoloured head-bow, and breast-knot, which she observed would look bright and cheerful when the gloomy days should come. Certainly Sarah had learned to spend money, since she treated herself, with so many misgivings, to her first rich black silk. And Nora was teaching her by slow degrees how to dress herself, insisting that she should never wear more than two colours at a time, and, as a rule, only one, contrasted with black or with a neutral tint, or else the neutral tint relieved by some decided hue.

The shopping happily concluded, it was not many steps to the railway station, and the Wolverham train was already on the platform. Wolverham was reached, as Nora had predicted, shortly before two, and for the sake of the exercise they agreed to walk to Merrilees. "And," said Nora, "if they lunch at two, as is most probable, we should just disturb them. If we walk they will have time to get over luncheon before we arrive. They have afternoontea at five, I know, and they dine at seven. Wolverhamn does not keep late hours any more than Bradfield, Gertie says.”

"Seven is late enough for dinner, in all conscience; I find it so. It is just one of your uncle's whims to have a late dinner."

"Gertie has lived in London so much, and the people in her set rarely dine before eight, or half-past eight; or else, to us, seven seems no very early hour. Oh, what a beautiful day it is, and we are getting out of the dirty town! See, ma tante, that Virginian creeper is beginning to turn colour! That looks like

autumn."

They walked quietly on, chatting pleasantly, till they came to Merrilees, a pretty house, standing in small, well-kept grounds of its own. Letty's husband was a Wolverham ironmaster. And here, at Mrs. Burton's threshold, the second disappointment of the day befel them. The servant who opened the door was very sorry, but her mistress and Miss Bethell, with the nurse and baby, had driven to Tangley to spend the day with Mrs. Burton, senior. They would return, however, before' dark, on account of the baby: would the ladies like to wait, and have some luncheon? For Mrs. Burton's parlourmaid had been trained at St. Oswald's Rectory, and knew Nora quite well.

But Nora did not feel inclined to spend a solitary afternoon, and perhaps not see her friends after all. Therefore she declined the parlourmaid's offer; and, turning to Mrs. Pettifer, said—“I can go with you, can I not, ma tante? A drive will be very pleasant this afternoon."

The girl told them where they would find a cab-stand, and accordingly they departed, as Nora said, to try their luck with the third person they had purposed visiting that day. The Great Moor Road runs out of Wolverham a long way; it used to be little more than a mile from its commencement to the open country, but of late years semi-detached villas, terraces of various pretensions, handsome-looking houses, belted in with miniature shrubberies, and all sorts of respectable tenements, from the ambitious, wouldbe mansion, to the genteel six or eight roomed house, have stretched themselves out mile after mile, till it is really difficult to define where Great Moor Road really ends, and where the main street of the small town of Dringfold commences. In fact, the road runs right across what used to be the great, lone moor of other days, ere the suburban movement was inaugurated, and before building societies were in existence.

Now, Sarah had not been in Great Moor Road for many years past, and Nora never. Mrs. Peglar used to come to Bradfield at stated periods, till she became too infirm to leave the house; but Sarah rarely visited Wolverham. She was naturally much surprised at the alterations which met her view. Houses large and small occupied the space which had been fields or market gardens when she was here last, and before they had reached the old boundaries she was obliged to confess that the Great Moor Road, with

many roads crossing it at right angles, all with very fine names, was to her a complete terra incognita.

"I am sure I don't know where I am!" said Sarah, feeling more and more bewildered; "I thought I could walk up to the very door as easily as I walked into Mr. Salisbury's this morning. It is quite another place! Mrs. Peglar's was one of the best little houses on the road; there were fields and a brook beyond: there are no fields now. Oh! I believe that is the house! I am sure of it; I know it by that funny little porch; but how dreadfully untidy everything is!"

Nora thought Mrs. Peglar could not be a very particular lady, for the place was neglected and dirty in the extreme. The windowblinds were torn, and the muslin curtains were both coarse and uncleanly. A woman, to match them, answered their knock, and in reply to their enquiry, told them that no Mrs. Peglar lived there, "nor had'nt for a good spell." The dirty person herself bad inhabited "Jessamine Cottage" for nearly five years. Then Mrs. Pettifer suddenly remembered that Mrs. Peglar had removed some few years ago, in order to get more into the country. But, as the address was still "Great Moor Road," and as the houses had been renumbered, Sarah had scarcely noticed the change. "And I am sure at this moment I cannot recollect the number," she said, as they went back to the fly; "it seems to me it was two hundred and something. Let us drive on; we may be able to inquire. Mrs. Peglar has lived hereabouts nearly all her life; people must know her.”

But, strange to say, no one knew where Mrs. Peglar lived. One person was "a stranger in these parts;" another had heard which was the house, but could not rightly tell. The last person consulted was sure it was in a row of small houses a little further "But," he added, "if you ask at one of them shops-there are three-they will know."

on.

Sarah and Nora were so tired of stepping in and out of their not very well appointed vehicle, that they sent the driver on to the shops to make inquiries; and the youth who had just spoken volunteered to hold the horse, which would scarcely have run away, under any circumstances.

"I am getting quite tired," said Sarah, a little crossly. "If we fail this time, I think we had better drive back to the station at once, and take the next train home--Nora, child, what is the matter?"

It is like him, yet But if it is not he it very knot of purple

"Is that mon oncle? But, no! It cannot be. it is not he! Look, I pray you, ma tante! is his bag! for there, on the handle, is the ribbon which I fastened on, that he might know it, because gentlemen's black bags are so much alike."