'If you would get tea, please, we should be much obliged; and oh, Miss
Peck, do you think you could give him a bed?'

'There is nothing but the little attic, but I daresay it will do him
very well. He doesn't look as if he were accustomed to anything much
better,' said Miss Peck, with frank candour. So it was arranged, and
Gladys, drying her eyes, offered to help the little woman as best she
could.

Abel Graham looked keenly and critically at his niece when she returned
to the room and laid the cloth for tea. His eye was not trained to the
admiration or appreciation of beauty, but he was struck by a singular
grace in her every movement, by a certain still and winning loveliness
of feature and expression. It was not the beauty sought for or beloved
by the vulgar eye, to which it would seem but a colourless and lifeless
thing; but a pure soul, to which all things seemed lovely and of good
report, looked out from her grave eyes, and gave an expression of gentle
sweetness to her lips. With such a fair and delicate creature, what
should he do? The question suggested itself to him naturally, as a
picture of his home rose up before his vision. When he thought of its
meagre comfort, its ugly environment, he confessed that in it she would
be quite out of place. The house in which he had found her, though only
a hired shelter, was neat and comfortable and home-like. He felt
irritated, perplexed; and this irritation and perplexity made him quite
silent during the meal. They ate, indeed, without exchanging a single
word, though the old man enjoyed the fragrant tea, the sweet, home-made
bread, and firm, wholesome butter, and ate of it without stint. He was
not, indeed, accustomed to such dainty fare. Gladys attended quietly to
his wants, and he did not notice that she scarcely broke bread. When the
meal was over, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and rose