I can't help feeling it will be a wrench;" and the old soldier's voice quivered as he spoke.
"It cannot be otherwise, sergeant," Mrs.Walsham said kindly.

"You have been everything to each other, and though, for her good and happiness, you are ready to give her up, it is a heavy sacrifice for you to make." That afternoon, the sergeant went for a long walk alone with Aggie, and when they returned Mrs.Walsham saw, by the flushed cheeks and the swollen eyes of the child, that she had been crying.

James noticed it also, and saw that she seemed depressed and quiet.

He supposed that her grandfather had been telling her that he was going to take her away, for hitherto nothing had been said, in her hearing, as to the approaching termination of the stay with his mother.
As they came out of church, Mrs.Walsham had waited for a moment at the door, and had told the butler at the Hall that she wished particularly to speak to him, that afternoon, if he could manage to come down.

They were not strangers, for the doctor had attended John's wife in her last illness, and he had sometimes called with messages from the Hall, when the doctor was wanted there.
John Petersham was astonished, indeed, when Mrs.Walsham informed him that the little girl he had seen in her pew, in church, was his master's granddaughter.
"You don't say so, ma'am.