er all his."

"I thought you said he had gone on to Dawson's farm," said Jemima.

"Oh, yes! he just went up there; and then he left his horse there,
like a wise man, and came to us in the pretty, cool, green wood. Oh,
Jemima, it was so pretty--little flecks of light coming down here and
there through the leaves, and quivering on the ground. You must go
with us to-morrow."

"Yes," said Mary, "we're going again to-morrow. We could not gather
nearly all the strawberries."

"And Leonard is to go too, to-morrow."

"Yes! we thought of such a capital plan. That's to say, Mr Farquhar
thought of it--we wanted to carry Leonard up the hill in a king's
cushion, but Mrs Denbigh would not hear of it."

"She said it would tire us so; and yet she wanted him to gather
strawberries!"

"And so," interrupted Mary, for by this time the two girls were
almost speaking together, "Mr Farquhar is to bring him up before him
on his horse."

"You'll go with us, won't you, dear Jemima?" asked Elizabeth; "it
will be at--"

"No! I can't go!" said Jemima, abruptly. "Don't ask me--I can't."

The little girls were hushed into silence by her manner; for whatever
she might be to those above her in age and position, to those below
her Jemima was almost invariably gentle. She felt that they were
wondering at her.

"Go upstairs and take off your things. You know papa does not like
you to come into this room in the shoes in which you have been out."

She was glad to cut her sisters short in the details which they were
so mercilessly inflicting--details which she must harden herself to,
before she could hear them quietly and unmoved. She saw that she had
lost her place as the first object in Mr Farquhar's eyes--a position
she had hardly cared for while she was secure in the enjoyment of it;
but the charm of it now was redoubled, in her acute sense of how she
had forfeited it by her own doing, and her own fault. For if he were
the cold, calculating man her father had believed him to be, and had
represented him as being to her, would he care for a portionless
widow in humble circumstances like Mrs Denbigh; no money, no
connexion, encumbered with her boy? The very action which proved Mr
Farquhar to be lost to Jemima reinstated him on his throne in her
fancy. And she must go on in hushed quietness, quivering with every
fresh token of his preference for another! That other, too, one so
infinitely more worthy of him than herself; so that she could not