be stubborn about anything. But in this there had been no moving her.
And now there was nothing before either of them but the same shabbiness
and penury as before. What if George had two hundred and fifty a year
of his own, besides his pay?--a fact that Nelly was always triumphantly
brandishing in her sister's eyes.

No doubt it was more than most young subalterns had--much more. But what
was two hundred and fifty a year? Nelly would want every penny of it for
herself--and her child--or children. For of course there would be a
child--Bridget Cookson fell into profound depths of thought, emerging
from them, now as often before, with the sore realisation of how much
Nelly might have done with her 'one talent,' both for herself and her
sister, and had not done.

The sun dropped lower; one side of the lake was now in shadow, and from
the green shore beneath the woods and rocks, the reflections of tree and
crag and grassy slope were dropping down and down, unearthly clear and
far, to that inverted heaven in the 'steady bosom' of the water. A
little breeze came wandering, bringing delicious scents of grass and
moss, and in the lake the fish were rising.

Miss Cookson moved away from the window. How late they were! She would
hardly get home in time for her own supper. They would probably ask her
to stay and sup with them. But she did not intend to stay. Honeymooners
were much better left to themselves. Nelly would be a dreadfully
sentimental bride; and then dreadfully upset when George went away. She
had asked her sister to join them in the Lakes, and it was taken for
granted that they would resume living together after George's departure.
But Bridget had fixed her own lodgings, for the present, a mile away,
and did not mean to see much of her sister till the bridegroom had gone.