Four months in their passage leave traces, more or less perceptible, on us all. On the first evening of May's arrival, her grandmother drew her to the window, where the rosy light of a fine summer evening shone full on her face, and scrutinized her long and lovingly. Then she kissed her grand-daughter's cheek, and tapping her lightly on the forehead, said, "This is not the big baby I parted from. You're a woman now, my lass. God bless thee!" May stoutly declared that she was not changed at all; that she had returned from all the pomps and vanities just the same May as ever. But on her side she found changes.

On her first view of it in the glow of a rosy sunset, Jessamine Cottage had been looking its best. The little parlour was fragrant with flowers, and May's tiny bedroom was a pleasant nest of white dimity, smelling of lavender and dried rose-leaves. She thought the house delightful. But a very brief acquaintance showed it to be badly built and inconvenient—one of those paltry "bandboxes" of which Mrs. Dobbs had been wont to speak with contempt. Moreover, there was an indefinable air of greater poverty than she remembered in Friar's Row; and—last and worst of all—she thought granny herself looking ill. When she hinted this privately to Uncle Jo, he scouted the idea. Ill? No, no; Sarah was never ill. There was nothing amiss with Sarah. But the suggestion made him look at his old friend with new observation, and he was forced to acknowledge to himself that she was not quite so active as formerly. But he still would not admit the idea of illness. "She'll be all right now she's got you back again, Miranda," said Mr. Weatherhead, incautiously. "It's the sperrit, you see—the sperrit has been preying on the body. There's where it is."

The idea that granny had been fretting at her absence strengthened May in her resolution not to return to London. If it were absolutely insisted upon she must, she supposed, keep the compact and pay her visit to Glengowrie. But after that she would resume her place by her grandmother's side—the place to which duty and affection equally bound her. She wrote to her father announcing this intention. And she suggested that the money spent on her expenses in London would be far better employed in paying granny handsomely for her board. "I do not think she is so well off as she used to be," wrote May in simple good faith. "And I am sure, my dear father, you will feel with me that we are bound to do anything in the world we can to help her, after all her goodness to me."

The subject which mainly occupied Mrs. Dobbs's waking thoughts after May's arrival was the unknown "gentleman of princely fortune" who might turn out to be May's fate. But, try as she would, she could find no clue to May's feeling about this individual, nor could she discover who he might be. Once she tried a joking question of a general kind about sweethearts and admirers, but May's response was as far as possible from the tone of a lovelorn maiden.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, granny, don't talk of such things. It makes me sick!" was her very unexpected exclamation. And then, with a little judicious cross-questioning, the story of Theodore Bransby's wooing came out.

"Well, well, well, child, you needn't be so fierce! Poor young man! I can't help feeling sorry for his disappointment," said Mrs. Dobbs.

"Don't waste your sorrow on him, granny; he ought to have known better."

"Well, as to that, May——" began her grandmother, with a slow smile spreading over her face.

"Now, granny dear, only listen! At any rate he might have known better when he was told, mightn't he? But he would not take 'no' for an answer; and when Uncle Frederick spoke to him the next day, he was quite rude, and declared—it makes me so hot when I think of it!—declared he had been encouraged! The idea of his daring to say such a thing! And, you know all the time I quite thought he was as good as engaged to Conny Hadlow. Everybody said so in Oldchester."

"'Everybody' is a person who makes a good many mistakes about his neighbours' affairs, May. Mrs. Simpson says that young Bransby is not coming down here this summer."

"So much the better! However, in any case, he would not honour you with one of his condescending visits now. Do you remember that evening when he called in Friar's Row? How little we thought——"

May chatted with as much apparent candour and frankness as ever. But in all her descriptions of the people whom she met in London there was not one who seemed to fit Mrs. Dormer-Smith's unknown.

"Maybe her saying no word is a sign she likes him," reflected Mrs. Dobbs; "girls will keep a secret of that kind very close. They are shy of it even in their own thoughts. If I saw him and her together, I could make a shrewd guess as to how things are."

But there was no chance of her seeing them together, and the gentleman of princely fortune remained wrapped in mystery.

Meanwhile, May went to see her old friends, and was pronounced by most of them to be quite unspoiled by her London season. But one critical spirit, at least, there was in Oldchester, who did not look on Miss Cheffington with unmixed approbation: Mr. Sebastian Bach Simpson declared that she gave herself airs.

One of the first visits which May paid was to the old house in College Quad. The Canon received her with his former paternal benevolence; but, at first, a slight indefinable chill was perceptible in Mrs. Hadlow's usually cordial manner. A little maternal jealousy on the subject of Theodore Bransby rankled in her mind. It was true that Constance did not seem to care for him; would not probably have accepted him had he asked her. But, under all the circumstances, Mrs. Hadlow was strongly of opinion that he ought to have asked her. And then a rumour reached Oldchester of Theodore's attentions to Miss Cheffington. But there was no resisting May's warm and single-minded praises of her friend. It seemed that Conny's prospects had grown unexpectedly brilliant. Mr. Owen Rivers, who had recently reappeared in Oldchester after his own erratic fashion, walking in one morning unexpectedly to his aunt's quaint old sitting-room, pronounced his cousin to have made a great social success. "You know my opinion of the worth of that game, Aunt Jane," said he. "But, such as it is, Conny has won it. Old Lord Castlecombe is in love with her. And—which is far more important—so is Mrs. Griffin. You and I always knew she was handsome. But there are certain people to whom the evidence of their senses is as nothing compared with the evidence of peers, and griffins, and such-like heraldic creatures."

"My Aunt Pauline is in love with Conny, too," declared May. "I ought to be jealous; for Aunt Pauline is always quoting Constance Hadlow to me as an example of everything that is delightful in a girl. But I knew it before. I didn't wait for the heraldic creatures, did I, Mrs. Hadlow?"

And so the old affectionate, familiar intercourse was resumed, and May was welcomed in the old way. The Canon missed his daughter, and had not consented easily to her prolonged absence. He liked to see young faces around him; and May's face was particularly pleasant to him. At first May had refused to leave her grandmother. But Mrs. Dobbs urged her to spend some hours every day with the Hadlows. "I have my own occupations in the daytime," she said; "and when you come home of an evening, and tell me all your sayings and doings, I can enjoy it comfortably. I don't want you hanging about this poky little place all day, my lass."

The girl was the more easily persuaded to do as her grandmother wished in this matter from her own secret resolve to fix herself in Oldchester. She did not grudge the hours given to her friends. There would be plenty more time to be spent with granny. So she thought; reckoning on the morrow with the assurance of youth. Day after day she sat during the hot afternoon hours under the black shadow of the old yew tree in the Canon's garden; sometimes volunteering to do some task of needlework for Mrs. Hadlow, sometimes winding wool for the Canon's grey socks, sometimes making up posies for the adornment of the sitting-room. And there was Fox, the terrier, dividing his attentions between her and his mistress; the peaceful Wend flowing by on the other side of the hedge; the garden blooming, the birds twittering, the distant schoolboys shouting, the sweet cathedral bells chiming,—everything as it had been last summer.

And yet not quite as it had been. There was some subtle difference between these afternoons and the afternoons of last summer.

It was not merely that Constance was missed, nor that Theodore Bransby no longer made one of the group beneath the yew tree. Of these changes one was scarcely to be regretted—for Conny was enjoying herself extremely, and only desired to prolong her leave of absence—and the other was undoubtedly satisfactory. But this could not surely suffice to make it a deep delight to sit silent and wind balls of gray worsted for half an hour at a stretch! Was it the negative joy of Theodore's absence which caused May to look forward with her first waking thoughts to those hours in the garden, and to live them over again in her mind when she lay down to rest at night? It seemed as if the London season, far from spoiling her for simple things, had marvellously enhanced the quiet pleasures of her home life, and given them a new intensity.

They were very quiet pleasures, truly. Mary Rayne and the Burton girls seldom appeared in College Quad now that Constance was away. Mrs. Hadlow had no lawn-tennis court, as has already been set forth; and persons who gave up their garden-ground to the frivolous purpose of growing flowers could not expect their younger friends to spare them many minutes out of a summer's day. Visitors of the sterner sex were chiefly represented by Major Mitton and Dr. Hatch, with a liberal sprinkling of the elder cathedral clergy.

The eldest Miss Burton said to May once, "I can't imagine how you stand the dull life down here after your aunt's house in town! But I suppose you are simply resting on your oars. We hear you are to go to Glengowrie in the autumn. How delicious! The Duchess is sure to have her house filled with nice people."

May emphatically denied that she was dull in Oldchester. Dull! She had never, she thought, been so happy in her life. "I wonder," said she to Mrs. Hadlow that same afternoon, "whether Violet Burton feels Oldchester to be dull. And if not, why should she assume that I do?"

"Violet has a serious object in life, you know. She is the best tennis player in the county. One cannot be dull with an absorbing pursuit of that sort," answered Mrs. Hadlow, who, with all her genial benevolence, had an occasional turn of the tongue which proved her kinship with her nephew Owen.

"The fact is," observed the latter, who was lying under the yew tree with a pipe in his mouth, and an uncut magazine in his hand, "that each of us carries his own supply of dulness about with him independently of external circumstances. Not but what there are conceivable cases where external circumstances would have a tremendous dulness-producing power; such as being banished to a desolate shore beyond the reach of 'baccy;' or having to read the Parliamentary debates right through every day."

"Or being obliged to attend a musical afternoon at Miss Piper's London lodging three times a week," put in May, laughing. "You don't know what a hopeless heretic he is, Mrs. Hadlow. Even amiable Mr. Sweeting gave him up in despair. And Lady Moppett thinks he ought to be excommunicated."

"Well, I suppose he need not have gone to Miss Piper's unless he had chosen to do so," said Aunt Jane. "Owen is rather fond of being pitied for having his own way. He ate his cake in the shape of enjoying Miss Piper's music, and had it in the shape of declaring himself a victim."

"Enjoying——? Good heavens!" exclaimed Owen, waving his pipe in protest.

"Why did you go, then?"

To this simple query Owen made no other response than muttering, with his pipe between his teeth again, that there were "compensations."

"Owen," said his aunt abruptly, after a long silence, "you are a most unsatisfactory spectacle to behold."

"That's disappointing, Aunt Jane. I flattered myself that I was a thing of beauty and a joy for ever."

"I shouldn't care about your not being ornamental, if only you were useful. But it is dreadful to see you wasting your life."

"I assure you I am employing my life in a very agreeable manner just now," answered Owen, resting on his elbow, and glancing up from under the shadow of his straw hat.

"Agreeable! That is not the point."

"It's my point."

"Ah! Well, we won't begin a wrangle, Owen; but——"

"My dear Aunt Jane! Do I ever wrangle with you?"

"You do worse. I'm afraid you are incorrigible. But every one else sees that I am right. Ask May what she thinks."

May started, and coloured violently; but she kept her eyes on the needlework in her hand, and said nothing.

"No; I shall not ask Miss Cheffington. She is a partisan, and would be sure to side with you."

"Not at all. May has her own opinions; haven't you, May?"

"One can't help having opinions," returned May shyly.

"Good gracious! Miss Cheffington, what an extraordinarily wild assertion! 'Can't help having opinions——'? One might suppose you had been nurtured among sages, and had never heard of Mr. Thomas Carlyle's celebrated majority."

"I have been nurtured by Granny," rejoined May, lifting her eyes for the first time with a bright, brief glance.

"Ay," exclaimed Mrs. Hadlow, "I'd advise you to ask Mrs. Dobbs what she thinks of a young man with your education and talents—oh, you need not disclaim having brains, it only makes your case so much the worse!—sitting lazily in his form, and letting all sorts of dunderheaded tortoises win the race."

"Bravo, Aunt Jane! I like 'dunderheaded tortoises.' 'Mobled Queen is good.'"

"You wouldn't enjoy hearing Mrs. Dobbs's opinion, I can tell you. I know very well what she would say," pursued Mrs. Hadlow, more than half angry.

"I should like to ask her myself," said Owen, rising to his feet. "Do you think I might, Miss Cheffington?"

"Of course! If you have courage!" answered May, looking up with a smile.

"I'm quite in earnest; I have long wished to know Mrs. Dobbs. Do you think she would consider it a liberty if I were to call?"

May cast her eyes down again, and became very busy with her needlework. "No," she answered; "I don't think Granny would consider it a liberty; she knows about you. I mean she knows you are Mrs. Hadlow's nephew."

Mrs. Hadlow gave no more thought to this conversation, and May, although she gave many thoughts to it, told herself that Mr. Rivers had only been jesting, and that nothing was more unlikely than that he should fulfil his words. She told herself so, with all the more insistence because at the bottom of her heart she longed that he and "Granny" should know each other.

Nevertheless, on the very next afternoon, when May was absent, Owen Rivers did call at Jessamine Cottage.

He was at once received with cordiality for his aunt's sake, but he soon earned a welcome for his own. Jo Weatherhead took to him amazingly. "That's what I call a gentleman," said he, "a real gentleman—sterling metal, and not Brummagem electro-plating. What a difference from that young Bransby! A stuck-up, impudent—but, Lord! what could one expect from an old Rabbitt's grandson! There's where it is."

"Mr. Rivers is a good Radical, Jo," Mrs. Dobbs answered slyly. Whereupon Jo nodded his head with undiminished complacency, and declared that if it wasn't for such Radicals as them, Radicalism might soon shut up shop altogether; concluding with his favourite apophthegm that many good things came down from above, but very few mounted up from below.