comforting,' thought Ethel sadly, as she slowly entered the passage,
'what shall I think of, to make a break for both of those two?'

'So you have been cockering your infant,' said Tom, meeting her. 'You
mean to keep him a baby all his life.'

'Tom, I want to talk to you,' said she.

In expectation of her displeasure, he met it half way, setting his back
against the passage wall, and dogmatically declaring, 'You'll be the
ruin of him if you go on in this way! How is he ever to go through the
world if you are to be always wiping his tears with an embroidered
pocket-handkerchief, and cossetting him up like a blessed little
sucking lamb?'

'Of course he must rough it,' said Ethel, setting her back against the
opposite wall; 'I only want him to be hardened; but after a shock like
this, one cannot go on as if one was a stock or stake. Even a machine
would have its wheels out of order--'

'Well, well, but it is time that should be over.'

'So it is;' and as the sudden thought flashed on her, 'Tom, I want you
to reconsider your journey, that you gave up in the spring, and take
him--'

'I don't want to go anywhere,' he wearily said.

'Only it would be so good for him,' said Ethel earnestly; 'he really
ought to see something taller than the Minster tower, and you are the
only right person to take him, you are so kind to him.'

'For instance?' he said, smiling.

'Accidents will happen in the best regulated families; besides, he did
want shaking up. I dare say he will be the better for it. There's the
dinner-bell.'

To her surprise, she found his arm round her waist, and a kiss on her
brow. 'I thought I should have caught it,' he said; 'you are not half
a fool of a sister after all.'

Aubrey was not in the dining-room; and after having carved, Tom, in
some compunction, was going to look for him, when he made his
appearance in his uniform.

'Oho!' said the Doctor, surprised.

'There's to be a grand parade with the Whitford division,' he answered;
and no more was said.

Not till the eight o'clock twilight of the dripping August evening did
the family reassemble. Ethel had been preparing for a journey that
Mary and Gertrude were to make to Maplewood; and she did not come down
till her father had returned, when following him into the drawing-room,
she heard his exclamation, 'Winter again!'

For the fire was burning, Tom was sitting crumpled over it, with his
feet on the fender, and his elbows on his knees, a