When they parted from her and Nellie, John was careful not to say anything more about the odes, a subject to which Mrs.Goddard had not referred in the course of the evening.

John thanked her rather effusively for her help--he could never have got through those choir benches without her, he said; and the vicar added that he was very much obliged, too, and surreptitiously conveyed to Mrs.Goddard's hand a small package intended for Miss Nellie's Christmas stocking, from him and his wife, and which he had forgotten to give earlier.

Nellie was destined to have a fuller stocking than usual this year, for the squire had remembered her as well as Mr.Ambrose.
John went to bed in his old room at the vicarage protesting that he had enjoyed the first day of his holiday immensely.

As he blew out the light, he thought suddenly how often in that very room he had gone to bed dreaming about the lady in black and composing verses to her, till somehow the Greek terminations would get mixed up with the Latin roots, the quantities all seemed to change places, and he used to fall asleep with a delicious half romantic sense of happiness always unfulfilled yet always present.

And now at last it began to be fulfilled in earnest; he had met the lady in black at last, had spent nearly half a day in her company and was more persuaded than ever that she was really and truly his ideal.