nd there is papa's pupil--if you call that a party. We are
just as quiet as when you went away. We never invite strangers. We are
as much by ourselves as ever."

"With a friend of Reginald's, and a friend of yours, and papa's pupil!"
said Mrs. Hurst, laughing; "double your own number, Ursula! and I don't
suppose Janey counts yet. Why, there is a young man too many. How dare
you waste the gifts of Providence, you prodigal child? And now let me
hear who they are."

"You may say Janey doesn't count," cried that young woman in person.
"Oh, Mrs. Hurst, what a bore they are! If that's society, I don't care
for society. One always following Ursula about whenever she moves, so
that you can't say a word to her; and the others pulling poor Phoebe to
pieces, who hates them, I am sure. Phoebe was so jolly at first. She
would talk to you, or she would play for you! Why, she taught Johnnie
and me a part-song to sing with her, and said he had a delightful
voice; but she never has any time to look at us now," said Janey,
stopping in this breathless enumeration of wrongs. "She is always taken
up with those horrible men."

"I suppose you call Reginald a horrible man?" said Ursula, with rising
colour. "If that was my opinion of my own brother, I should take care
not to say it, at least."

"Oh, Reginald isn't the worst! There's your Mr. Northcote, and there's
that Copperhead--Woodenhead, we call him in the nursery. Oh, how papa
can put up with him, I can't tell! he never had any patience with us.
You can't think how dull he is, Mrs. Hurst! I suppose girls don't mind
when a man _goes on_, whether he's stupid or not. I never heard Mr.
Northcote say much that was interesting either; but he looks clever, and
that is always something."

"So Mr. Northcote is Ursula's one," said Mrs. Hurst, laughing. "You are
a perfect jewel, Janey, and I don't know how I should ever find out
anything that's going on, but for you. Northcote! it is a new name in
Carlingford. I wonder I have not heard of him already; or have you kept
him entirely to yourself, and let nobody know that there was a new man
in the place?"

There was a little pause here. The girls knew nothing about Northcote,
except the one fact that he was a Dissenter; but as Mrs. Hurst was an
excellent Churchwoman, much better than they were, who had, perhaps,
been brought up too completely under the shadow of the Church to believe
in it implicitly, they hesitated before pronouncing before her