not remember exactly how it was that I came to know that
Polly--even Polly--had her own private heart-ache. I think I took an
unfair advantage of her strict truthfulness, when I once suspected
that she had a secret, and insisted upon her confiding in me as I had
done in her. Nurse Bundle gave me the first hint. Mrs. Bundle,
however, believed that "Miss Mary" was only waiting for me to ask her
to be mistress of Dacrefield Hall. And though she had "never seen the
young lady that was good enough for her boy," she graciously allowed
that I might "do worse than marry Miss Mary."

"My time's pretty near come, my dear," said Mrs. Bundle, "but many's
the time I pray the Lord to let me live to put in if it is but a pin,
when your lady dresses for her wedding."

But I was not to be fooled a second time by the affectionate belief my
friends had in my attractions.

"My dear old Nursey," said I, squatting down with Sweep by her easy
chair, "I know what a dear girl Polly is, and if she wanted to be Mrs.
Dacre she soon should be. But you're quite mistaken there; she is my
dear sister, and always will be so, and never anything else."

"Well, well," said Nurse Bundle, "young folks know their own affairs
better than the old ones, and the Lord above knows what's good for us
all, but I'm a great age, and the Squire's not young, and taking the
liberty to name us together, my deary, in all reason it would be a
blessing to him and me to see you happy with a lady as fit to take
your dear mother's place as Miss Mary is. For let alone everything
else, my dear, servants is not what they used to be, and when I'm dead
you'll be cheated out of house and home, without any one as knows what
goes to the keeping of a family, and what don't."

"Well, Nursey," said I, "I'll try and find a lady to please you and
the governor. But it won't be Polly, I know, and I wish it may be any
one as good."

I bullied poor Polly sadly about having a secret, and not confiding it
to me. She was far from expert at dissembling, and never told an
untruth, so I soon drove her into a corner.

"I'm rather disappointed, I must confess, in one way," said I, having
found her unable flatly to deny that she did "care for" somebody. "I
always hoped, somehow, that you and Leo would make it up together."

"You heard what Maria said," said Polly, shortly.

"Oh, I don't believe in the heiress," said I, "unless you've refused
him. He'd never take up with the blue-stocking lady