Presently Mrs. Ormonde led the way downstairs and to the rear of the house.  A room formerly devoted to billiards had been converted into a homely but very bright refectory; it was hung round with cheerful pictures, and before each of the two windows stood a large aquarium, full of water-plants and fishes.  At the table were seated seven little girls, of ages from eight to thirteen, all poorly clad, yet all looking remarkably joyous, and eating with much evidence of appetite.  At the head of the table was a woman of middle age and motherly aspect—­Mrs. Mapper.  She had the superintendence of the convalescents whom the lady of the house received and sent back to their homes in London better physically and morally than they had ever been in their lives before.  The children did not notice that Mrs. Ormonde and her companion had entered; they were chatting gaily over their meal.  Now and then one of them drew a gentle word of correction from Mrs. Mapper, but on the whole they needed no rebuke.  Those who had been longest in the house speedily instructed new arrivals in the behaviour they had learned to deem becoming.  A girl waited at table.  On that subject Mrs. Ormonde had amusing stories to relate; how more than one servant had regretfully but firmly declined to wait upon little ragamuffins (female, too), and how one in particular had explained that she made no objection to doing it only because she regarded it as a religious penance.

Egremont had his pleasure in regarding her face, nobly beautiful as she moved her eyes from one to another of her poor little pensioners.  She had said at first that it would be impossible ever again to live in this house, when she quitted it for a time after her husband’s death.  How could she pass through the barren rooms, how dwell within sight and sound of the treacherous waves which had taken her dearest?  It was a royal thought which converted the sad dwelling into a home for those whose reawakening laughter would chide despondency from beneath the roof; whose happiness would ease the heavy heart and make memory a sacred solace.  She had her abounding reward, and such as only the greatly loving may attain to.

They withdrew without having excited attention; Mrs. Mapper saw them, but Mrs. Ormonde made sign to her to say nothing.

‘Two are upstairs, I’m sorry to say,’ she remarked as they went back to the drawing-room.  ’They have obstinate colds; I keep them under the bed-clothes.  The difficulty these poor things have in getting rid of a cold!  With many of them I believe such a condition is chronic; it goes on, I suppose, until they die of it.’

They talked together till luncheon time.  Egremont led the conversation back to Ullswater, where Mrs. Ormonde had just spent a fortnight.

‘I think I must go and see them at Christmas,’ he said, ’if they don’t come south.’

The other considered.

‘Don’t go so soon,’ she said at length.