hesitate in your walk--that, I should
think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate."

"It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on
what he _did_ say to Eliza. Eliza!"

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were
now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza
standing quite quietly and at ease.

"Yes, my son," responded Captain Rexford, "it _does_ depend a good deal
on what he _did_ say to Eliza. Now, Eliza" (this was the beginning of a
judicial inquiry), "I understand from Mrs. Rexford that----"

"I've heard all that you have said," said Eliza. "I've been just here."

"Ah! Then without any preface" (he gave a wave of his hand, as if
putting aside the preface), "I might just ask you, Eliza, what this
young--Harkness, I believe his name is--what----"

"He's just too chatty, that's all that's the matter with him," said
Eliza. "He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet
if I hadn't come away. There was no sense in what he said, good or bad."

The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.

When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the
sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been
doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold
established themselves there. Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was
more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there
was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad
to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room. It was their
habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza
should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction. Harold
very often read aloud to them. It was astonishing how quickly, not
imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits
and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor
imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by careful study reproducing
in herself much of Sophia's refinement.

CHAPTER XV.

That evening Blue and Red were sent to bed rather in disgrace, because
they had professed themselves too sleepy to finish sewing a seam their
mother had given them to do.

Very sleepy, very glad to fold up their work, they made their way,
through the cold empty room which was intended to be the drawing-room
when it was furnished, to one of the severa