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I ever thought I should like a relation. See how brave I am in a letter, when you aren’t sitting there to frighten me with your child’s eyes! You have a way of seeming very far off. It amused me in London, but it hurts now. I don’t suppose we shall ever get to know each other really well—but good luck to you, Pamela.”

She was not very satisfied with her reply. It sounded stilted and not as friendly as she wanted it to be. She was very afraid of saying anything that would sound as if she were lonely or unhappy, and yet she knew he would not be pleased if she wrote an account of Miss Sidmouth’s relations. But, try as she would, a vaguely forlorn note crept into her simple recital of the pleasantest parts of her days. There was a rambling sort of park in the rather dull town where they were staying, and Pamela spent hours there with a book, or simply strolling over the grass and watching the children and the birds.

“Isn’t it a great help when one is really fond of Nature?” she wrote in her childish way, “just to be among trees and flowers is enough really. Books are a help too. . . . Do you know———” She paused there; she must not assume that he had not read very much. He had, of course, though she was not very clear as to when he had found time for it. She scratched out the last word carefully and went on. “Do you remember what the gipsy says in Lavengro? ‘Life is sweet, brother. There’s day and night, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things. There’s likewise a wind on the heath.’ That is a great comfort.”

She ended abruptly, devoutly hoping that he would never guess how many chinks there were in the day which Nature did not manage to fill up. And after a while, even the solace of the park was denied her. In this quiet place she had overcome the timidity which had spoilt