“Looks very stupid,” commented Mrs. Rexford, hastily pulling in her head and speaking within the room.  “But still, one must not lose a chance.”  Then with head again outside, she continued, “Do you understand me, my good girl?  What is your name?”

“Eliza White.”

“That is a very good name”—­encouragingly.  “Where do you live?”

“I used to live a good bit over there, in the French country.”  She pointed with her arm in a certain direction, but as the points of the compass had no existence for Mrs. Rexford’s newly immigrated intelligence, and as all parts of Canada, near and remote, seemed very much in the same place in her nebulous vision of geography, the little information the girl had given was of no interest to her and she took little note of it.

“Did you come from Quebec just now?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, after a moment’s pause.

Then, in answer to further questions, she told a succinct tale.  She said that her father had a farm; that he had died the week before; that she had no relatives in the place; that, having seen her father buried, she thought it best to come to an English-speaking locality, and wait there until she had time to write to her father’s brother in Scotland.

“Sad, sad story!  Lonely fate!  Brave girl!” said Mrs. Rexford, shaking her head for a minute inside the waiting-room and rapidly repeating the tale.

“Yes, if it’s true,” said Sophia.  But Mrs. Rexford did not hear, as she had already turned her head out of the door again, and was commending Eliza White for the course she had taken.

The grey-eyed Winifred, however, still turned inside to combat reproachfully Sophia’s suspicions.  “You would not doubt her word, Sophia, if you saw how cold and tired she looked.”

Mrs. Rexford seemed to argue concerning the stranger’s truthfulness in very much the same way, for she was saying:—­

“And now, Eliza, will you be my servant?  If you will come with me to Chellaston I will pay your fare, and I will take care of you until you hear from your uncle.”

“I do not want to be a servant.”  The reply was stolidly given.

“What! do you wish to be idle?”

“I will work in your house, if you like; but I can pay my own fare in the cars, and I won’t be a servant.”

There was so much sullen determination in her manner that Mrs. Rexford did not attempt to argue the point.

“Take her, mamma,” whispered Winifred.  “How ill she seems!  And she must be awfully lonely in this great country all alone.”

Mrs. Rexford, having turned into the room, was rapidly commenting to Sophia.  “Says she will come, but won’t be called a servant, and can pay her own fare.  Very peculiar—­but we read, you know, in that New England book, that that was just the independent way they felt about it.  They can only induce slaves to be servants there, I believe.”  She gave this cursory view