tired
of reading "Walton's Lives." She had come to a dull place in Dr. Donne's
memoirs, though she thought them delightful at first. She was just
reading "The Village on the Cliff," on her own account, with perfect
delight.

"Harry reads 'Walton's Angler,'" said Nelly. "That's the same man, isn't
he? It is a stupid-looking old brown book that belonged to my
grandfather."

"Papa reads it, too," said Betty, nodding her head wisely. "I am in such
a hurry to have him come, when I think of Harry. I am sure that he will
help him to be a naturalist or something like that. Mr. Buckland would
have just loved Harry. I knew him when I was a little bit of a thing.
Papa used to take me to see him in London, and all his dreadful beasts
and snakes used to frighten me, but I do so like to remember him now.
Harry makes me think of Robinson Crusoe and Mayne Reid's books, and
those story-book boys who used to do such wild things fishing and
hunting."

"We used to think that Harry never would get on because he spent so
much time in the woods, but somehow he always learned his lessons too,"
said Nelly proudly; "and now his fishing brings in so much money that I
don't know how we shall live when winter comes. We are so anxious about
winter. Oh, Betty, it is easy to tell you, but I can't bear to have
other people even look at me;" and she burst into tears and hid her face
in her hands.

"Let us go out-doors, just down through the garden and across into the
woods a little while," pleaded Betty. "Do, Nelly, dear!" and presently
they were on their way. The fresh summer air and the sunshine were much
better than the close-shaded room, where Nelly was startled by every
sound about the house, and they soon lost their first feeling of
constraint as they sat under a pine-tree whipping two of Miss Barbara
Leicester's new tea-napkins. Betty had many things to say about her
English life and her friends. Mary Beck never cared to hear much about
England, and it was always delightful to have an interested listener. At
last the sewing was finished, and Nelly proposed that they should go a
little way farther, and come out on the river bank. Harry would be
coming up about this time with his fare of fish, if he had had good
luck. It would be fun to shout to him as he went by.

They pushed on together through the open pasture, where the sweet-fern
and bayberry bushes grew tall and thick; there was another strip of
woods between them and the river, and j