CHAPTER II.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13431, 23 March 1907, Page 6

CHAPTER 11.

A PENITENT.

Mabin looked at Mrs. Bonnington's retreating figure, half -regretfully and half -resentfully. The regret was for her own incivility; the resentment was for the want of tact which had provoked it.

Mabin, like so many other young girls on the threshold of womanhood, lived in a, constant state of warfare both with herself and her neighbours. Sensitive, affectionate, hasty tempered, and wilful, she was at the same time almost morbidly modest and distrustful of herself; so that she passed her time in alternate bursts of angry resentment against those who misunderstood her, and fits' of%eniorse for her own shortcomings. ' ' f $he now; mounted her bicycle with the feeling that the vicar's wife had spoiled her morning's ride for her. Not by any means a vain girl, she underrated her own attractions, which included a pretty gray-eyed little flower-face, a fair skin, and short, soft, dark-Vown hair. But she was keenly alive to the reproach of clumsiness, which had so often been cast at her. She had shot up, within the last three years, to a height which,

together with the girjish leanness of her figure, had caused her to bo called, even outside the family circle, a " lamppost," and a "gawky creature." And although she stubbornly refused to take to the long skirls which wduld have lent her the graco she* wanted, she nourished a smouldering indignation against her traducers. And chief among these were the boys of the vicarage, against whom, as against their mother for her criticisms, and their father for his dull sermons, her spirit was always in arms.

The strife between the Bonningtons and the Roses had not always been so keen. Indeed, in the old days when they were children together, Mabin and Rudolph had got on well enough together, and had exchanged love-tokens of ends of slate pencil, lumps of chalk, and birds' eggs. But with advancing years had come first coolness and then estrangement; so that it was now the correct thing for. the Bonnington boys to laugh at Mabin for being " advanced," " superior," " a new woman," and a " fright " ; while she, on her side, treated them with lofty cqntem.pt as "savages" and "boors." Mabin had not gorie'* -twenty yards, however, on her way up the^ slight ascent, when she saw something which diverted her thoughts from the vicarage people. The gates at "The Towers" were wide open, and Mrs. Dale's smart victoria, with its well-matched pair of small, dark-brown horses, came out so suddenly that Mabin had to jump off her bicycle to avoid a collision. Alone in the carriage sat a lady in deep mourning, who turned and looked out anxiously at the girl, t and s'tbpped the carriage to speak to he*r. "I'm so sorry! I- hope you didn't hurt yourself in hd,ving fr to jump off so quickly?" asked the lady in black, in a sweet, plaintive voice that struck some chord in Mabin' s heart, and made the girl gasp and pause before she could answer. ?;. sn "Oh, no — oh, noyythahk you. One often has to do that," stammered the girl, flushing, and speaking with a shy constraint which made her tone cold and almost rude. .;•_>/. .

And she knew it, poor child, and was miserable otfer it ; miserable to think that now, when she had an opportunity of speaking to the being who had excited in her ail enthusiastic admiration, she was throwing her chance away. (To be continued.)