WE WERE a little late to dinner, but Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd were lenient¹, and we all took our places after William had paused to wash his hands, like a pious² Brahmin, at the well, and put on a neat blue coat which he took from a peg³ behind the kitchen door. Then he resolutely⁴ asked a blessing⁵ in words that I could not hear, and we ate the chowder and were thankful. The kitten went round and round the table, quite erect⁶, and, holding on by her fierce young claws, she stopped to mew with pathos⁷ at each elbow, or darted⁸ off to the open door when a song sparrow forgot himself and lit in the grass too near. William did not talk much, but his sister Todd occupied the time and told all the news there was to tell of Dunnet Landing and its coasts, while the old mother listened with delight. Her hospitality was something exquisite⁹; she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves and their houses belong entirely¹⁰ to a guest's pleasure,—that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one's own life that can never be forgotten. Tact¹¹ is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held the golden gift. Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett's world and mine were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness. Sometimes, as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she had been set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast. It must have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her

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