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round the lamp she had lighted. In spite of the children’s chatter Ann felt very desolate and very homesick. She was alone, a stranger in a strange land. Far away some bird was calling mournfully—a weka she knew it to be afterwards—a horse neighed down in one of the paddocks, and from the hills around came the lonely and plaintive bleating of distant sheep. Through the blue gums of the plantation on her left a little breeze sighed sadly. Ann took up her pen. She’d write to Bob. She knew it would be kinder not to do so—she ought to allow him to forget her—but she was feeling so forlorn that she must speak to some one, some friend. Her stiff little letter to her father announcing her arrival in Wairiri had been written the previous night. Her stepmother wouldn’t want to hear. “My dear Bob!” She sat balancing her pen in her hand. He’d told her that if she ever changed her mind: No, she wouldn’t write. It wasn’t fair. She liked him and respected him, but she didn’t love him. Well, what was love? Did that wild passionate attachment exist outside the pages of romantic novels? Probably it didn’t—and in any case if it did, nine girls out of ten didn’t find it. She wasn’t a stupid, sentimental schoolgirl pining for love; but at the present moment she did undoubtedly feel very lonely and deserted, and would have welcomed a little human companionship. She wished Mrs. Holmes had suggested her joining them in the drawing-room. Oh, well! There didn’t seem anything left for her to do but take a book from the little bookshelf on the wall, and read herself to sleep. But as she rose from the writing-table there was a knock at her door, and Mrs. Holmes entered. As usual she was smoking.

“Have you got everything you want? Oh, you’d