aid
Miss Amilly, laughing. "You should have gone apprentice to a
pastry-cook."

"She's a regular fidgety old woman, that Miss Hautley," broke out Master
Cheese with temper, passing over Miss Amilly's remark. "It's not two
months yet that she has been at the Hall, and she has had one or the
other of us up six times at least. I wonder what business she had to
come to it? The Hall wouldn't have run away before Sir Edmund could get
home."

Miss Deb came back with the bread-and-jam; a good thick slice, as the
gentleman had requested. To look at him eating, one would think he had
had nothing for a week. It disappeared in no time, and Master Cheese
went out sucking his fingers and his lips. Deborah West folded up the
work, and put things straight generally in the room. Then she sat down
again, drawing her chair to the side of the fire.

"I do think that Cheese has got a wolf inside him," cried Amilly, with a
laugh.

"He is a great gourmand. He said this morning----" began Miss Deb, and
then she stopped.

Finding what she was about to say thus brought to an abrupt conclusion,
Amilly West looked at her sister. Miss Deb's attention was riveted on
the room door. Her mouth was open, her eyes seemed starting from her
head with a fixed stare, and her countenance was growing white. Amilly
turned her eyes hastily to the same direction, and saw a dark, obscure
form filling up the doorway.

Not obscure for long. Amilly, more impulsive than her sister, rose up
with a shriek, and darted forward with outstretched arms of welcome;
Deborah followed, stretching out hers.

"My dear father!"

It was no other than Dr. West. He gave them each a cool kiss, walked to
the fire and sat down, bidding them not smother him. For some little
while they could not get over their surprise or believe their senses.
They knew nothing of his intention to return, and had deemed him
hundreds of miles away. Question after question they showered down upon
him, the result of their amazement. He answered just as much as he
chose. He had only come home for a day or so, he said, and did not care
that it should be known he was there, to be tormented with a shoal of
callers.

"Where's Mr. Jan?" asked he.

"In the surgery," said Deborah.

"Is he by himself?"

"Yes, dear papa. Master Cheese has just gone up to Deerham Hall, and the
boy is out."

Dr. West rose, and made his way to the surgery. The surgery was empty.
But the light of a fire from the half-op