pity she chose to emphasize.

Godfrey was on distant seas. The north-bound mid-afternoon express bore
away the bridal pair for a week's absence.

"Too short," said a friend or so whom Leonard fell in with as he came
from the railway station, and Leonard admitted that Arthur was badly in
need of rest.

At sunset Ruth came out of her gate and stood to welcome her brother's
tardy return. Both brightly smiled; neither spoke.

When he gave her a letter with a foreign stamp her face lighted
gratefully, but still without words she put it under her belt. Then they
joined hands, and he asked, "Where's father?"

"Inside on the lounge," she replied. Her lips fell into their faraway
smile, to which she added this time a murmur as of reverie, and Leonard
said almost as musingly, "Come, take a short turn."

They moved on to the Winslow gate, and entered the garden by a path
which brought them to a point midway between the old cottage and the
larger house. There it crossed under an arch transecting an arbor that
extended from a side door of the one dwelling to a like one of the
other, and the brother and sister had just passed this embowered spot
and were stepping down a winding descent by which the path sought the
old mill-pond, when behind them they observed two women pass athwart
their track by way of the arbor, and Ruth smiled and murmured again.
The crossing pair were Mrs. Morris and Sarah Stebbens, the Winslows'
life-long housekeeper, deeply immersed in arranging for Isabel to