ay, and
making their mother write off to press him to come again; which
he, being a very good-natured young man, and particularly fond of
boys, was ready enough to do. So this was the third visit he had
paid in a month.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown wondered a little that he should be so very
fond of the young Porters, who were good boys enough, but very
much like other boys of thirteen and fifteen, of whom there were
several in the neighborhood. He had indeed just mentioned an
elder sister, but so casually that their attention had not been
drawn to the fact, which had almost slipped out of their
memories. On the other hand, Tom seemed so completely to identify
himself with the boys and their pursuits, that it never occurred
to their father and mother, who were doatingly fond of them,
that, after all, they might not be the only attraction. Mary
seemed to take very little notice of him, and went on with her
own pursuits much as usual. It was true that she liked keeping
the score at cricket, and coming to look at them fishing or
rabbiting in her walks; but all that was very natural. It is a
curious and merciful dispensation of Providence that most fathers
and mothers seem never to be capable of remembering their own
experience, and will probably go on till the end of time thinking
of their sons of twenty and daughters of sixteen or seventeen as
mere children who may be allowed to run about together as much as
they please. And, where it is otherwise, the results are not very
different, for there are certain mysterious ways of holding
intercourse implanted in the youth of both sexes, against which
no vigilance can prevail.

So on this, her great fete day, Tom had been helping Mary all the
morning in dressing the rooms with flowers and arranging all the
details--where people were to sit at cold dinner; how to find the
proper number of seats; how the dining-room was to be cleared in
time for dancing when the dew began to fall. In all which matters
there were many obvious occasions for those little attentions
which are much valued by persons in like situations; and Tom was
not sorry that the boys had voted the whole preparations a bore,
and had gone off to the brook to 'gropple' in the bank for
crayfish till the shooting began. The arrival of the note had
been the first _contre-temps_ of the morning, and they were now
expecting guests to arrive every minute.

"What is the matter? No bad news I hope," he said, seeing her
vexed exp