At the door Alice turned.  The large eyes were resting upon her with an intent and solemn regard, in which lay a message.  “What was it?” she thought, as she passed through the wide hall sweet with flowers.  “She wanted to say something; I am sure she did.  To-morrow I will ask her.”  But before the morrow came she knew.  Mrs. Dennison had said good-bye.

The funeral was over.  Mr. Denison, who had looked unaccountably ill and weary for months, had been sent home by Mr. Danby for at least a year’s change and rest, and the doctor’s young sister had yielded to various pressure, and promised to stay with the children until he returned.  There was every reason for it.  She had loved and been loved by the gentle Maori mother; she delighted in the dark beauty and sweetness of the children.  And they, on their side, clung to her as to an adorable fairy relative, dowered with love and the fruits of love—­tales and new games and tender ways.  Best reason of all, in a sense, Mrs. Bentley, that kind autocrat, entreated her to stay, “as the happiest thing for the children, and to please that poor lamb we laid yonder, who fair longed that you should!  She was mightily taken up with you, Miss Danby, and you’ve your brother and his wife near, so that you won’t be lonesome, and if there’s aught I can do to make you comfortable, you’ve only to speak, miss.”  As for Mr. Denison, he was pathetically grateful and relieved when Alice promised to remain.

After the evening romp and the last good-night, when the two elder children, Ben and Marie, called after her mother, Maritana, had given her their last injunctions to be sure and come for them “her very own self” on her way down to breakfast in the morning, she usually rode down between the cabbage-trees, down by the old rata, fired last autumn, away through the grasslands to the doctor’s house, a few miles nearer Rochester; or he and his wife would ride out to chat with her.  But there were many evenings when she preferred the quiet of the airy house and the garden.  The colonial life was new to her, everything had its charm, and in the colonies there is always a letter to write to those at home—­the mail-bag is never satisfied.  On such evenings it was her custom to cross the meadow to the copse of feathery trees beyond, where, sung to by the brook and the Tui, the children’s mother slept.  And from the high presence of the Mountain Beautiful there fell a dew of peace.

She would often ask Mrs. Bentley to sit with her until bedtime, and revel in the shrewd north-country woman’s experiences, and her impressions of the new land to which love had brought her.  Both women grew to have a sincere and trustful affection for each other, and one night, seven or eight months after Mrs. Denison’s death, Mrs. Bentley told a story which explained what had frequently puzzled Alice—­the patient sorrow in Mrs. Denison’s eyes, and Mr. Denison’s harassed and dejected manner.  “But for your goodness to the children,” said the old