there are such things as canals," replied Johanna.
"When do you mean to have your little talk with her ?" Hilary did not know.

She was sitting, rather more tired than usual, by the school-room fire, the little people having just departed for their Saturday half-holiday.

Before clearing off the debris which they always left behind, she stood a minute at the window, refreshing her eyes with the green field opposite, and the far-away wood, crowned by a dim white monument, visible in fair weather, on which those bright brown eyes had a trick of lingering, even in the middle of school hours.

For the wood and the hill beyond belonged to a nobleman's "show" estate, five miles off--the only bit of real landscape beauty that Hilary had ever beheld.

There, during the last holidays but one, she, her sisters, her nephew, and, by his own special request, Mr.Lyon, had spent a whole long, merry, midsummer day.