r capable of, inserted
herself within the doorway, so as to prevent herself from being shut out
as the girl took her message. The next moment the girl came back saying,
"This way, ma'am," opened the door of a small dreary, dusty, cold
parlour, where she shut them in, and disappeared before a word could be
said.

There they remained so long, that in spite of such encouragement
as could be derived from peeping over the blinds at Coombe standing
sentinel over his two young masters at the carriage window, Lady Temple
began to feel some dismay, though no repentance, and with anxious
iteration conjured Miss Williams to guess what could be the cause of
delay.

"Making ready for our reception," was Alison's answer in various forms;
and Lady Temple repeated by turns, "I do not like it," and "it is very
unsatisfactory. No, I don't like it at all," the at all always growing
more emphatic.

The climax was, "Things must be very sad, or they would never take so
much preparation. I'll tell you, Miss Williams," she added in a low
confidential tone; "there are two of us, and the woman cannot be in two
places at once. Now, if you go up and see the rooms and all, which I saw
long ago, I could stay and talk to the poor children."

Alison was the more surprised at the simple statecraft of the General's
widow, but it was prompted by the pitiful heart yearning over the
mysterious wrongs of the poor little ones.

At last Mrs. Rawlins sailed in, crape, streamers, and all, with the
lowest of curtsies and fullest of apologies for having detained her
Ladyship, but she had been sending out in pursuit of Mr. Mauleverer, he
would be so disappointed! Lady Temple begged to see the children, and
especially Lovedy, whom she said she should like to take home for a
holiday.

"Why, my lady, you see Mr. Mauleverer is very particular. I hardly know
that I could answer it to him to have one of his little darlings out of
his sight. It unsettles a child so to be going home, and Lovedy has a
bad cold, my lady, and I am afraid it will run through the house. My
little Alice is beginning of it."

However, Lady Temple kept to her desire of seeing Lovedy, and of letting
her companion see the rest of the establishment, and they were at last
ushered into the room already known to the visitors of the F. U. E. E.,
where the two children sat as usual in white pinafores, but it struck
the ladies that all looked ill, and Lovedy was wrapped in a shawl, and
sat cower