d long enough, Nettie's object would have been apparent.
Not entirely free of that air of agitated haste--not recovered from the
excitement of this discovery, she was relieving her restless activity by
a significant rearrangement of all the possessions of the family. She
was separating with rapid fingers those stores which had hitherto lain
lovingly together common property. For the first time for years Nettie
had set herself to discriminate what belonged to herself from the general
store; and, perhaps by way of softening that disjunction, was separating
into harmonious order the little wardrobes which were no longer to be
under her charge. Freddy opened his eyes to see all his own special
belongings, articles which he recognised with all the tenacious
proprietorship of childhood, going into one little box by themselves in
dreadful isolation. The child did not know what horrible sentence might
have been passed upon him while he slept. He gazed at those swift
inexorable fingers with the gradual sob rising in his poor little breast.
That silent tempest heaved and rose as he saw all the well-known items
following each other; and when his last new acquisition, the latest
addition to his wardrobe, lay solemnly smoothed down upon the top,
Freddy's patience could bear no more. Bursting into a long howl of
affliction, he called aloud upon Nettie to explain that mystery. Was he
going to be sent away? Was some mysterious executioner, black man, or
other horrid vision of fate, coming for the victim? Freddy's appeal
roused from her work the abdicated family sovereign. "If I'm to be sent
away, I shan't go!" cried Freddy. "I'll run off and come back again. I
shan't go anywhere unless you go, Nettie. I'll hold on so fast, you can't
put me away; and, oh, I'll be good!--I'll be so good!" Nettie, who was
not much given to caresses, came up and put sudden arms round her special
nursling. She laid her cheek to his, with a little outbreak of natural
emotion. "It is I who am to be sent away!" cried Nettie, yielding for a
moment to the natural bitterness. Then she bethought herself of certain
thoughts of comfort which had not failed to interject themselves into
her heart, and withdrew with a little precipitation, alarmed by the
inconsistency--the insincerity of her feelings. "Get up, Freddy; you are
not going away, except home to the colony, where you want to go," she
said. "Be good, all the same; for you know you must not trouble mamma.
And ma