of corn. To the left was a narrow path running between hedges
past the cottages and into the country.

Miss Loach's house was a mixture of old and new. Formerly it
had been an unpretentious cottage like the others, but she had
added a new wing of red brick built in the most approved style
of the jerry-builder, and looking like the villas in the more
modern parts of Rexton. The crabbed age and the uncultured
youth of the old and new portions, planted together cheek by
jowl, appeared like ill-coupled clogs and quite out of
harmony. The thatched and tiled roofs did not seem meet
neighbors, and the whitewash walls of the old-world cottage
looked dingy beside the glaring redness of the new villa. The
front door in the new part was reached by a flight of dazzling
white steps. From this, a veranda ran across the front of the
cottage, its rustic posts supporting rose-trees and ivy. On
the cottage side appeared an old garden, but the new wing was
surrounded by lawns and decorated with carpet bedding. A
gravel walk divided the old from the new, and intersected the
garden. At the back, Susan noted again the high brick wall
surrounding the half-completed mansion. Above this rose tall
trees, and the wall itself was overgrown with ivy. It
apparently was old and concealed an unfinished palace of the
sleeping beauty, so ragged and wild appeared the growth which
peeped over the guardian wall.

With a quickness of perception unusual in her class, Susan
took all this in, then rang the bell. There was no back door,
so far as she could see, and she thought it best to enter as
she had done in the morning. But the large fat woman who