go on making my tea, and doing pretty much what she likes, for she is so
good they need not try to make her better, only to teach her what a lady
should know."

Miss Monro was selected--a plain, intelligent, quiet woman of forty--and
it was difficult to decide whether she or Mr. Wilkins took the most pains
to avoid each other, acting with regard to Ellinor, pretty much like the
famous Adam and Eve in the weather-glass: when the one came out the other
went in. Miss Monro had been tossed about and overworked quite enough in
her life not to value the privilege and indulgence of her evenings to
herself, her comfortable schoolroom, her quiet cozy teas, her book, or
her letter-writing afterwards. By mutual agreement she did not interfere
with Ellinor and her ways and occupations on the evenings when the girl
had not her father for companion; and these occasions became more and
more frequent as years passed on, and the deep shadow was lightened which
the sudden death that had visited his household had cast over him. As I
have said before, he was always a popular man at dinner-parties. His
amount of intelligence and accomplishment was rare in ---shire, and if it
required more wine than formerly to bring his conversation up to the
desired point of range and brilliancy, wine was not an article spared or
grudged at the county dinner-tables. Occasionally his business took him
up to London. Hurried as these journeys might be, he never returned
without a new game, a new toy of some kind, to "make home pleasant to his
little maid," as he expressed himself.

He liked, too, to see what was doing in art, or in literature; and as he
gave pretty extensive orders for anything he admired, he was almost sure
to be followed down to Hamley by one or two packages or parcels, the
arrival and opening of which began soon to form the pleasant epochs in
Ellinor's grave though happy life.