me," she cried with both hands laid
in mine, and her tearful eyes looking up at me.

"Not one, my pet, but a hundred," I answered, kindly embracing her:
"have no fear, little sister: I am going to make your case so bright, by
comparison, I mean, that mother will send for you in five minutes, and
call you her best, her most dutiful child, and praise Cousin Tom to the
skies, and send a man on horseback after him; and then you will have a
harder task to intercede for me, my dear."

"Oh, John, dear John, you won't tell her about Lorna--oh, not to-day,
dear."

"Yes, to-day, and at once, Annie. I want to have it over, and be done
with it."

"Oh, but think of her, dear. I am sure she could not bear it, after this
great shock already."

"She will bear it all the better," said I; "the one will drive the other
out. I know exactly what mother is. She will be desperately savage first
with you, and then with me, and then for a very little while with both
of us together; and then she will put one against the other (in her mind
I mean) and consider which was most to blame; and in doing that she will
be compelled to find the best in either's case, that it may beat the
other; and so as the pleas come before her mind, they will gain upon the
charges, both of us being her children, you know: and before very long
(particularly if we both keep out of the way) she will begin to think
that after all she has been a little too hasty, and then she will
remember how good we have always been to her; and how like our father.
Upon that, she will think of her own love-time, and sigh a good bit,
and cry a little, and then smile, and send for both of us, and beg our
pardon, and call us her two darlings."

"Now, John, how on earth can you know all that?" exclaimed my sister,
wiping her eyes, and gazing at me with a soft bright smile. "Who on
earth can have told you, John? People to call you stupid indeed! Why,
I feel that all you say is quite true, because you describe so exactly
what I should do myself; I mean--I mean if I had two children, who had
behaved as we have done. But tell me, darling John, how you learned all
this."

"Never you mind," I replied, with a nod of some conceit, I fear: "I must
be a fool if I did not know what mother is by this time."

Now inasmuch as the thing befell according to my prediction, what need
for me to dwell upon it, after saying how it would be? Moreover, I would
regret to write down what mother said about