it she put away a secret hope she had allowed herself to cherish, without a change of expression on her kind plain face, and Emmeline Drew resolved that the next time she saw a certain old bachelor of Lowbridge she would not snub him as she had done at a previous meeting.  Of course, if Rosemary West was out to catch the minister she would catch him; she looked younger than she was and men thought her pretty; besides, the West girls had money!

“It is to be hoped that he won’t be so absent-minded as to propose to Ellen by mistake,” was the only malicious thing she allowed herself to say to a sympathetic sister Drew.  Emmeline bore no further grudge towards Rosemary.  When all was said and done, an unencumbered bachelor was far better than a widower with four children.  It had been only the glamour of the manse that had temporarily blinded Emmeline’s eyes to the better part.

A sled with three shrieking occupants sped past Mr. Meredith to the pond.  Faith’s long curls streamed in the wind and her laughter rang above that of the others.  John Meredith looked after them kindly and longingly.  He was glad that his children had such chums as the Blythes—­glad that they had so wise and gay and tender a friend as Mrs. Blythe.  But they needed something more, and that something would be supplied when he brought Rosemary West as a bride to the old manse.  There was in her a quality essentially maternal.

It was Saturday night and he did not often go calling on Saturday night, which was supposed to be dedicated to a thoughtful revision of Sunday’s sermon.  But he had chosen this night because he had learned that Ellen West was going to be away and Rosemary would be alone.  Often as he had spent pleasant evenings in the house on the hill he had never, since that first meeting at the spring, seen Rosemary alone.  Ellen had always been there.

He did not precisely object to Ellen being there.  He liked Ellen West very much and they were the best of friends.  Ellen had an almost masculine understanding and a sense of humour which his own shy, hidden appreciation of fun found very agreeable.  He liked her interest in politics and world events.  There was no man in the Glen, not even excepting Dr. Blythe, who had a better grasp of such things.

“I think it is just as well to be interested in things as long as you live,” she had said.  “If you’re not, it doesn’t seem to me that there’s much difference between the quick and the dead.”

He liked her pleasant, deep, rumbly voice; he liked the hearty laugh with which she always ended up some jolly and well-told story.  She never gave him digs about his children as other Glen women did; she never bored him with local gossip; she had no malice and no pettiness.  She was always splendidly sincere.  Mr. Meredith, who had picked up Miss Cornelia’s way of classifying people, considered that Ellen belonged to the race of Joseph.  Altogether, an admirable