Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/29

if she is kind enough to remember me at all, I shall feel greatly obliged to her. And somehow the word acquaintance seems to have no meaning in the life we lead out here."

"Oh, no," said Dr. Gray, heartily: "you must consider that you've left that word behind you. If we are not enemies in this country, we are friends. But Stella seems to be a long time over her lesson to-day. Would you like to go inside and hear the children sing?"

The question was put with such absolute simplicity and good faith that both young men hastened to accept, with a manner that implied that he had hit upon the thing in all the universe most in keeping with their aspirations.

"You must go in very softly," said Dr. Gray, "and not let her know you are there, else she might be too bashful to go on. I love to hear the singing, but I shouldn't wonder if my fancy for it is because Stella does the most of it."

The door stood open, and the two young men, accompanied by Dr. Gray, entered as softly as possible. Stella was standing with her back to the door, and the children were ranged in a long irregular line, facing her.

"Now, children, you know this," she was saying, encouragingly. "Do sing out, and say the words plainly. Now begin." And, raising her sweet voice rather softly, she began.

The children, led by her, went through the verses of the little hymn, and then Stella proposed another, and went from that to another, until Dr. Gray saw fit to curtail the exercises. As soon as he walked up, Stella motioned to the children to kneel for the concluding prayer, and when she knelt the young men down near the door fell softly on their knees also. There was a moment's stillness after the benediction, and then, as the little congregation rose, Stella turned and faced the young men. The surprise she felt at seeing them flushed her cheek for an instant, as she had kept the children unusually long, hoping the strangers might take their departure, and when her father had returned she had felt certain they were gone. Her self-possession returned to her quickly, however, as she walked down the old school-room, holding the hand of her smallest pupil, and not meeting the gaze of Hobart, which was fixed upon her.

She was dressed in a repetition of the white costume she had worn upon the rocks that day, save that this one was fresh and that one tumbled. Where the ends of her little fichu were tucked away in her dress, there were some sprigs of maidenhair fern that one of the children had brought her, having heard her one day express a fancy for the plant. The blue sun-bonnet had been discarded in favor of a straw