“Yes, you told me so last night.”

“Did I tell you of our expected guest?” he asked, after a pause.  “Miss Marie de Vere, the daughter of an old friend of my mother’s.  Her father was a Frenchman, an aristocrat, quite wealthy, and Marie is the only child, an orphan.  My mother has asked her here for a few weeks.”

“Isn’t it a striking name?” said Beth, “Marie de Vere, pretty, too.  I wonder what she will be like.”

“I hope you will like her, Beth.  She makes her home in Toronto, and it would be nice if you became friends.  You will be a stranger in Toronto, you know, next winter.  How nice it will be to have you there while I am there, Beth.  I can see you quite often then.  Only I hate to have you study so hard.”

“Oh, but then it won’t hurt my brain, you know.  Thoughts of you will interrupt my studies so often” she said, with a coquettish smile.

Clarence told her some amusing anecdotes of ’Varsity life, then went away early, as he was going to leave the village for a day or two.

Beth hurried off to the kitchen to help Aunt Prudence.  It was unusual for her to give any attention to housework, but a new interest in domestic affairs seemed to have aroused within her to-day.

The next day was Sunday, and somehow it seemed unusually sacred to Beth.  The Woodburn household was at church quite early, and Beth sat gazing out of the window at the parsonage across the road.  It was so home-like—­a great square old brick, with a group of hollyhocks beside the study window.

The services that day seemed unusually sweet, particularly the Sunday-school hour.  Beth’s attention wandered from the lesson once or twice, and she noticed Arthur in the opposite corner teaching a class of little girls—­little tots in white dresses.  He looked so pleased and self-forgetful.  Beth had never seen him look like that before; and the children were open-eyed.  She saw him again at the close of the Sunday-school, a little light-haired creature in his arms.

“Why, Arthur, I didn’t think you were so fond of children.”

“Oh, yes, I’m quite a grandfather, only minus the grey hair.”

It was beautiful walking home that afternoon in the light June breeze.  She wondered what Clarence was doing just then.  Home looked so sweet and pleasant, too, as she opened the gate, and she thought how sorry she should be to leave it to go to college in the fall.

Beth stayed in her room a little while, and then came down stairs.  Arthur was alone in the parlor, sitting by the north window, and Beth sat down near.  The wind had ceased, the sun was slowly sinking in the west, a flock of sheep were resting in the shadow of the elms on the distant hill-slope, and the white clouds paused in the blue as if moored by unseen hands.  Who has not been moved by the peace and beauty of the closing hours of a summer Sabbath?  Arthur and Beth were slow to begin conversation, for silence seemed more pleasing.