lighted, would be hard to beat for coziness. The schoolroom, on the
ground floor, had a separate side entrance on to the lawn, leading
through a small ante-room where boots and coats and cricket bats and
tennis rackets could be kept; the drawing-room had a luxurious ingle
nook with cushioned seats, and all the bedrooms but two had a southern
aspect. As for the big rambling garden, it was full of delightful
old-world flowers that came up year after year: daffodils and violets
and snow-flakes, and clumps of pinks, and orange lilies and Canterbury
bells, and tall Michaelmas daisies, and ribbon grass and royal Osmunda
fern, the sort of flowers that people used to pick in days gone by, put
a paper frill round, and call a nosegay or a posy. There was a lawn for
tennis and cricket, a pond planted with irises and bulrushes, and a wild
corner where crocuses and coltsfoot and golden aconite came up as they
liked in the spring time.

Winona loved this garden with somewhat the same attachment that a French
peasant bears for the soil upon which he has been reared. She rejoiced
in every yard of it. To go away and resign it to others would be
tragedy unspeakable. The fear that Aunt Harriet might recommend the
family to leave Highfield was sufficient to darken her horizon
indefinitely. That her mother had written to consult the oracle she was
well aware, for she had been sent to post the letter. She had an
instinctive apprehension that the answer would prove a turning-point in
her career.

For a day or two everything went on as usual. Mrs. Woodward did not
again allude to her difficulties, Percy had conveniently forgotten them,
and the younger children were not aware of their existence. Winona lived
with a black spot dancing before her mental eyes. It was continually
rising up and blotting out the sunshine. On the fourth morning appeared