with their milking pails or make journeys to the spring; where flowers trim the house-fronts, or where the little yard-gate says that everything, like itself, hangs by one hinge.  A good deal of life stories may be read by the way in a stage coach; but not until life has unfolded to us, perhaps, its characters; and so Wych Hazel did not read much and thought the ride tedious and long.  When she turned to her companions, Mr. Falkirk was thoughtful and silent, Mr. Rollo silent and seemingly self-absorbed, and if she looked at the other occupants of the coach—­Wych Hazel immediately looked out again.

The second day began under new auspices.  None of their former fellow travellers remained with them; save only Rollo and the servants; and the empty places were taken by a couple of country women, one young and rustic, the other elderly and ditto.  That was all that Wych Hazel saw of them.  The fact that one of the women presently fell to eating gingerbread and the other molasses candy, effectually turned all Miss Kennedy’s attention out of doors.

The cleared country was left behind; and the coach entered a region of undisturbed forest, through which it had many miles to travel before reaching civilization again.  The view was shut in.  The trees waved overhead and stretched along the road endlessly, too thick for the eye to penetrate far.  The coach rumbled on monotonously.  The smell of pines and other green things came sweet and odorous, but the day was hot, and everything was dry; the dust rose and the sunbeams poured down.  Wych Hazel languished for a change.  Only a red squirrel now and then reminded her what a lively life she led a day or two ago.  And Mr. Falkirk seemed too indifferent to mind the weather, and Rollo seemed to like it!  She was very weary.  Taking off her hat and leaning one hand on her guardian’s shoulder, she rested her head there, too—­looking out with a sort of fascinated intentness into the hazy atmosphere, which grew every moment thicker and bluer and more intensely hazy.  It almost seemed to take shape, to her eye, and to curl and wave like some animated thing among the still pines.  The countrywomen were dozing now; Mr. Rollo and Mr. Falkirk mused, or possibly dozed too; it made her restless only to look at them.  Softly moving off to her own corner, Wych Hazel leaned out of the window.  Dark and still and blue—­veiled as ever, the pines rose up in endless succession by the roadside; a yellow carpet of dead leaves at their feet, the woodpeckers busy, the squirrels at play over their work.  How free they all were!—­ with what a sweet freedom.  No danger that the brown rabbit darting away from his form, would ever transgress pretty limits!—­no fear that vanity or folly or ill-humour would ever touch the grace of those grey squirrels.  As for the red ones!—­ Miss Hazel brought her attention to the inside of the coach for a minute, but the sight gave only colour and no check to her musings.  How strange of that particular red squirrel to follow