well and everything is all right, but I beg of you, dear, not to try to get into communication with me in any other way than the one I have suggested. Do not be vexed with me, for I believe this arrangement to be the best for both of us, and please try not to worry about me more than you can help.—Yours affectionately, Jenny Winge."
So she moved from one widow to another, and into another small cottage—this time a red one with white-washed window-sills and standing in a little garden with flagged paths and shells around the flower-beds, where the dahlias and chysanthemums stood black and rotting. Twenty to thirty similar houses stood along a small street leading from the railway station to the fishing harbour, where the waves foamed against the long stone piers. On the beach, a little away from the village, stood a small hotel with the shutters up. Endless roads, with bare, straggling poplars bending in the wind, led out over interminable plains and swamps past small brick farms with a strip of garden front and a couple of haystacks at the back.
Jenny walked along the road as far as she could manage, returning home to sit in her little room, which this time was overloaded with precious knick-knacks, coloured plaster casts of castles, and merry scenes at country inns in brass frames. She had not the strength to change her wet shoes even, but Mrs. Schlessinger took off the boots and stockings, talking all the time, exhorting her to keep up her courage, telling her about all the other young ladies she had had in the house—how So-and-so had married and was well off and happy now.
When she had been there a month Mrs. Schlessinger came into her room one day, excited and beaming—a gentleman had come to see the young lady. Jenny was paralysed with fright, but managed at last to ask what he looked like. "Quite young," said Mrs. Schlessinger, with a lurking smile—"and
