it
must have been rather dirty under the bridge; another time she would
advise them to find a cleaner place.

"I suppose it was 'I spy' you were playing at," she said, and she did
not notice that no one answered her.

The rest of the afternoon passed quietly enough.

Hugh and Freda were rather unusually quiet, at which their Mother and
elder sister rejoiced.

"I do hope," said Sybil, as she drove home with Mrs. Kingley, leaving
the younger ones to follow as they had come, "I do hope those Frere
children, though they are younger, will have a good influence upon Hugh
and the girls, Freda especially. She has been getting wilder and wilder.
And Helena is such a lady-like, well-bred little girl."

"I hope so too," said her Mother. "I own I was a little afraid of our
children startling the Freres, but they seem to have got on all right."

[Illustration]

"Good night, dears," said Mrs. Frere to her three children an hour or so
later. "You were happy with your new friends, I hope? I think they seem
nice children, and they were very quiet and well-behaved to-day. Leigh,
my boy, you look half asleep--are you very tired?"

"My eyes are tired," said Leigh, "and my head, rather."

"Well, off with you to bed, then," she said cheerfully. She would not
have felt or spoken so cheerfully if she could have seen into her little
daughter's heart.

Nurse too noticed that Leigh looked pale and heavy-eyed.

She said she was afraid he had somehow caught cold. So she gave him
something hot to drink after he was in bed, and soon he was fast asleep,
breathing peacefully.

"He can't be very bad," thought Helena, "if he sleeps so quietly."

But though she tried not to be anxious about him, she herself could not
succeed in going to sleep.

She tossed about, and dozed a little, and then woke up again--wider
awake each time, it seemed to her. It was not _all_ anxiety about Leigh;
the truth was, her conscience was not at peace; she felt as if she
deserved to be anxious about her little brother, for she saw clearly
now, how she had been to blame--first, for giving in to the Kingleys in
doing what she knew her Mother would not have approved of, and besides,
and even worse than that--in concealing the wrong-doing, and telling
what was "not quite true" to her trusting Mother.

The tears forced their way into Helena's eyes when she owned this to
herself, and at last she felt that she could bear it no longer.

She got softly out of bed wit