his little kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely childhood in a country rectory—the long, dull days with no playfellows; then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund Rainham—and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him—poor Stephen, he hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and Stephen’s father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy, Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him into his home to be Stephen’s little brother and friend. Then the long happy time when the three children were always together: walking, boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother’s brother. Then the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered as
