every afternoon and thus prevented her becoming a slave of the needle. Mrs. Smythe, who lived in a large house overlooking the Common, was a cultured woman, with a fine literary taste, so Olive learned much in her society, and was saved from the narrowness and barrenness of mind which is too often the fate of the domestic drudge.

Not that Olive was exactly one's idea of a drudge. She was a tall, well-set-up girl, with fine, dark eyes, and an abundance of brown hair which was always beautifully dressed. The last statement might be made of Olive herself. Her clothes were never costly, unless the cost had been defrayed by some one else, but they were always smart. She knew how to wear them, as people say. Sewing or cooking, whatever Olive was about, her appearance was sure to be neat and trim, her dress adapted to the occasion and eminently becoming.

Dear old Olive! What a blessing she was to us all! Old she was not at this time, though, for she had not yet passed her twenty-first birthday. She and I were great chums. I think she understood even better than mother what this disappointment was to me. I read it in her eyes when presently she brought her work—a frock she was finishing for Ethel, the youngest of the five—and seated herself beside my bed, for the doctor had advised my lying still all that day. But Olive did not say much by way of sympathy. Like mother she bade me be brave. Mother herself was the bravest of women, and we had all been trained to despise cowardice, physical or moral.

"After all, Nan, you won't need pity if you go into the country early in the year," she said. "It's not very nice in London just now. You will escape the dreadful March we get in town, and be able to watch the gradual on-coming of the spring in the woods and lanes. I wish you could go to 'Gay Bowers.'"

"Yes," I said drearily; "it would be more endurable if I were with Aunt Patty."

She was our father's only sister, and our favourite aunt. We were less fond of her husband, some twenty years her senior, and now getting old and infirm. He was a great sufferer from gout, an affliction that is not conducive to serenity and amiability of mind. I had always admired the patience with which my aunt bore with his outbursts of temper.

"Poor Aunt Patty!" said Olive. "I guess she is having a rough time of it now. She said in her last letter, which came the day before yesterday, that uncle was worse than she had ever seen him."

"Then she certainly does not want me there as I am now," I 

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