She gave me your address, and I said that if ever I came to London I would come to you. Do you still let lodgings, and are they vacant?"

"I do, ma'am," Mrs. Thompson said, "and shall be only too glad to let them to any one whom mother recommended them to. If you had come two months later I might have been full, but my season does not begin till April, so we are quite empty at present."

A bargain was soon made with her, and Mrs. Thompson went to the top of the stairs and called "Mother," and, to my great surprise, the old bathing-woman herself came up. She knew me at once.

"Miss Ashleigh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, miss, I am so glad to see you. Do you know it is only ten days ago, when I saw your loss in the paper, that I said to Jane: 'Now, Jane, I should not be surprised if Miss Ashleigh comes up to town; every one does seem to come up here some time or other in their lives—perhaps this is her time.' And I said, miss, that I should take the liberty of writing to you in a few days, in case you might be coming up. I remembered I had given you Jane's address, but I thought you would have lost that long since. It is very kind of you to have thought of what an old woman said so long ago."

"Not kind at all," I said, "I was very glad to think that there was a place I seemed to know something of, and as I wrote the address down in my pocket-book at the time, I had no trouble in finding it. Have you given up your old occupation?"

"No, miss, but it is not the season now, and only one of us waits on through the winter, and as I begin to find the water then too cold for my old limbs, I have given it up these last two winters, and come here and stop with Jane and her husband."

Our landlady now took us upstairs. Our room was a nice large one, over the drawing room. Harry's was behind ours, smaller, but quite large enough for him, and both were beautifully clean and nice.

While tea was getting ready, we unpacked as much as we could, and in half an hour, when Harry's voice was heard shouting at the foot of the stairs that tea was ready, we were quite astonished to find how much we had done, and how nearly we had finished our unpacking and putting away. The room below looked so comfortable that we could not help exclaiming with surprise and pleasure when we went in. A bright fire blazed in the grate, various gauze covers which had been placed over the chimney glass and picture frames, had been taken off. A white table-cloth was laid on the table, with a very 

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