pleasant to have a person of her own age to talk to, and sometimes to
walk with, though the rector never felt quite sure what his sister would
say to that. However, Mrs. Dale had nothing to say; she shut her eyes to
any impropriety, and even remarked severely to Miss Deborah Woodhouse
that those old-fashioned ideas of a girl's being always under her
mother's eye, were prim and old maidish; "and beside, Lois's mother is
dead," she added, with a sort of triumph in her voice.

As for Lois, she almost forgot that she had thought Ashurst lonely when
Helen had gone, and Gifford; for of course, in so small a place, every
one counted. She had wondered, sometimes, before the Forsythes came, with
a self-consciousness which was a new experience, if any one thought she
missed Gifford. But her anxiety was groundless,--Ashurst imagination
never rose to any such height; and certainly, if the letters the young
man wrote to her could have been seen, such a thought would not have been
suggested. They were pleasant and friendly; very short, and not very
frequent; mostly of Helen and what she did; there was almost nothing of
himself, and the past, at least as far as a certain night in June was
concerned, was never mentioned. At first this was a relief to Lois, but
by and by came a feeling too negative to be called pique, or even
mortification at having been forgotten; it was rather an intangible
soreness in her memory of him.

"It is just as Miss Deborah says," she said to herself: "young men always
forget those things. And it is better that they do. Gifford never thinks
of what he said to me, and I'm sure I'm glad he doesn't--but still!" And
then that absurd suggestion of Miss Deborah's about Helen would creep
into her mind; she might banish it, because it was silly and impossible,
yet she did not utterly forget it. However, she really thought very
little about it; the presence of Mrs. Forsythe and her son gave her