would mention it, Nancy! the suggestion would come best from you, would not it?"

"And you are to be left alone at Tempest? Is that the plan ?" asks Algy, turning his eyes from his own face, and fixing them on the less interesting object of mine.

It may be my imagination, but I cannot help fancying that there is a tone of slight and repressed exultation in his voice; and also that a look of hope and bright expectation is passing from one to another of the faces round me. All but Barbara's! Barbara always understands.

"All alone?" cries Tou Tou, opening her ugly little eyes to their widest stretch. 'Nobody but the servants in the house with you? Will not you be very much afraid of ghosts?"

"She need never be alone, unless she chooses," says Bobby, winking with dextrous slightness at the others; "there is

the beauty of having three kind little brothers!"

"The moment you feel at all lonely," says Algy, emphasizing his remarks by benevolent but emphatic strokes with his flat hand on my shoulder, “send for us! one of us is sure to be handy! be any comfort to Sir Roger, I shall be most happy to promise him that I will keep all his horses in exercise next winter!"

If it will

"I am sorrier than I was before,” says Bobby, reflectively, "that the heavy rains have drowned so many of the young birds."

"Oh, Nancy!" cries Tou Tou, ecstatically clasping her hands, "have a Christmas tree!"

"And a dance after it!" adds Bobby, beginning to whistle a waltz tune.

"And Sir Roger's not being at home will be a good excuse for not asking

father," cries Algy, catching the prevailing

excitement.

“I will not have one of you!" cry I, rising with a face pale, as I feel, with anger with flashing eyes and a trembling voice, “not one of you shall enter his doors, except Barbara!—I hate you all!you are all g-g-glad that he is going, and I-I never was so sorry for anything in my life before!”

I end in a passion of tears. There is a silence of consternation on the late so jubilant assembly.

"Times is changed,' says the dog's-meat man,”

remarks Bobby, presently, veiling his discomfiture in vulgarity, and launching into uncouth and low-lived rhyme;

666

"Lights is riz,' says the dog's-meat man !"

CHAPTER III.

OWEVER, not all the hot tears

in the world not all the swelled noses and boiled-gooseberry eyes avail to alter the case. Not even all my righteous wrath against the boys' profits-and I do keep Bobby at arms' length for a day and a half. No one who does not know Bobby understands how difficult such a course of proceeding is; for he is one of those people who ignore the finer shades of displeasure. The more delicately dignified and civilly frosty one is to him, the more grossly familiar and hopelessly, obtusely friendly is

he. I have made several more efforts to change Sir Roger's decision, but in vain. He makes the case more difficult by laying his refusal chiefly on his own convenience; dilating on the much greater speed and ease with which he will be able to transact his business, if alone, than if weighted by a woman, and a woman's paraphernalia, and also on the desirability of having in me a locum tenens for himself at Tempest. But, in my soul, I know that both these are hollow pretences to lighten the weight on my conscience.

"But," say I, with discontented demurring, "you have been away often before! how did Tempest get on then?"

He laughs.

"Very middling, indeed! last time I was away the servants gave a ball in the new ball-room-so my friends told me afterwards, and the time before, the butler took the housekeeper a driving-tour in my