and rains of eleven summers and winters had washed nearly all the red
away; and as Mrs. Crawford had never had the money to spare for its
repainting, it would have presented a brown and dingy appearance
outwardly, but for the luxurious woodbine, which she had trained with so
much care and skill that it covered nearly three sides of the cottage,
and made a gorgeous display in the autumn, when the leaves had turned a
bright scarlet.

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Arthur Tracy, the cottage was furnished
comfortably and even prettily when Mrs. Crawford entered it, and it was
from the same kind friend that her resources mostly had come up to the
day when, three years after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die,
bringing with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold,
for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were living, she
did not know. He had left her in London six months before, saying he was
going over to Paris for a few days, and should be back almost before she
had time to miss him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:

'Cheer up, _petite_. I have not been quite as regular in my habits as I
ought to have been, but London is not the place for a man of my
tastes--too many temptations for a fellow like me. When I come back we
will go into the country, where you can have a garden, with flowers and
chickens, and grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl
I married. Good-bye.'

He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the stairs. She
never saw him again, and only heard from him once. Then he was in Paris,
and had decided to go for a week to Pau, where he said they were having
such fine fox hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and Amy
would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for Arthur Tracy,