a brother to you and whom you've known for years."

Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence
and intense curiosity.

When they reached their room, where Margaret's portmanteau had already
been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for
a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she
sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair "had
a good cry," and comforted each other as well as they might.

"And what are you going to do?" asked Janey, when, as Homer says, "they
had taken their fill of chilling lamentations."

"I don't know!"

"Have you no one else in all the world?"

"No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna.
Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers,
and we were at Marseilles, and then in London."

"But you have a guardian, haven't you?"

"Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he's been very kind, and done
everything for me; but he's quite a young man, not thirty, and he's so
stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like
a book. And he's so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because
he likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides--"

But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more
lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien's.

"And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?"
Janey asked.

"There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had
been an officer in father's ship, I think, or had known him long ago at
sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all."

"And you don't know any of your father's family?"

"No," said Margaret, wearily. "Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my
prayer-book." And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with
silver clasps. "This was a book my father gave me," she said. "It has a
name on it--my grandfather's, I suppose--'Richard Johnson, Linkheaton,
1837.'" Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling cloak.

"Your mother's father it may have belonged to," said Janey.

"I don't know," Margaret replied, looking out of the window.

"I hope you won't stay away long, dear," said Janey, affectionately.

"But _you_ are going, too, you know," Margaret answered, without much
tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break
down, when the