Well, sir, I had arranged everything comfortably, so that she should miss nothing by my being away, and I bade her good-bye, and started off to walk to Malsham.

I can't tell you how hard it seemed to me to leave her, for it was the first time we had been parted for so much as a day since she came to the Grange.

I thought of her all the while I was at my aunt's; who has very fidgety ways, poor old lady, and isn't a pleasant person to be with.

I felt quite in a fever of impatience to get home again; and was very glad when a neighbour's spring-cart dropped me at the end of the lane, and I saw the gray old chimneys above the tops of the trees.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when I got home; father was at tea in the oak-parlour where we take our meals, and the house was as quiet as a grave.