"Don't you ever mean to marry?"
Rowena laughed.
"Nobody axed me, sir," she said.
"Now that's a fib. You had three out in India who were your devoted admirers."
"I feel like a kitchen-maid when you talk so," said Rowena.
She was sitting over the fire with her sister-in-law in a small house in a Surrey village. They had not long returned from India. Colonel Arbuthnot had been carried off by an epidemic of cholera about five months after Rowena had joined them out there. As soon as she was able, his widow returned to England, and Rowena accompanied her. An old friend of Colonel Arbuthnot's, Sir Henry Hazelwood, had offered her a pretty cottage in the village of which he was squire; for young Mrs. Arbuthnot had found it necessary to economize as much as possible. Her husband before his death was finding himself in difficulties, and had arranged to give up his Scotch lodge, much to his sister's regret. They had now just settled in the cottage, and the young widow was striving to take up life again for the sake of her little ones.
Rowena, of course, was the mainstay in the house. Her cheery personality kept them all going, and she was ready to turn her hand to anything, from painting a gate to repairing a lock; she had just started poultry, and they were thinking of having a little rough pony and trap, for the market town was a good three miles away.
It was a cold afternoon in March. Outside it was cheerless and grey. Inside, though simplicity reigned throughout the cottage, the little drawing-room was a picture of cheery comfort. Mrs. Arbuthnot was seated on a comfortable Chesterfield couch by the fire, her sewing in her hand.
Rowena was in a lounge chair opposite her, knitting away at a boy's sock.
"I suppose I must feel snubbed," said Mrs. Arbuthnot with rather a sad little smile. "I will drop the subject. And I am sure, as I said before, it would be my own loss if you left me. Aren't you afraid we shall find this place most painfully dull?"