good-bye to me, that's all." And
she looked as if she should have liked to cry again.

"That was not manners," said Dixon, decisively.

"But it was my fault," replied Ellinor, pleading against the
condemnation.

Dixon looked at her pretty sharply from under his ragged bushy eyebrows.

"He had been giving me a lecture, and saying I didn't do what his sisters
did--just as if I were to be always trying to be like somebody else--and
I was cross and ran away."

"Then it was Missy who wouldn't say good-bye. That was not manners in
Missy."

"But, Dixon, I don't like being lectured!"

"I reckon you don't get much of it. But, indeed, my pretty, I daresay
Mr. Corbet was in the right; for, you see, master is busy, and Miss Monro
is so dreadful learned, and your poor mother is dead and gone, and you
have no one to teach you how young ladies go on; and by all accounts Mr.
Corbet comes of a good family. I've heard say his father had the best
stud-farm in all Shropshire, and spared no money upon it; and the young
ladies his sisters will have been taught the best of manners; it might be
well for my pretty to hear how they go on."

"You dear old Dixon, you don't know anything about my lecture, and I'm
not going to tell you. Only I daresay Mr. Corbet might be a little bit
right, though I'm sure he was a great deal wrong."

"But you'll not go on a-fretting--you won't now, there's a good young
lady--for master won't like it, and it'll make him uneasy, and he's
enough of trouble without your red eyes, bless them."

"Trouble--papa, trouble! Oh, Dixon! what do you mean?" exclaimed
Ellinor, her face taking all a woman's intensity of expression in a
minute.

"Nay, I know nought," said Dixon, evasively. "Only that Dunster fellow
is not to my mind, and I think he potters the master sadly with his fid-
fad ways."

"I hate Mr. Dunster!" said Ellinor, vehemently. "I won't speak a word to
him the next time he comes to dine with papa."

"Missy will do what papa likes best," said Dixon, admonishingly; and with
this the pair of "friends" parted,

CHAPTER IV.

The summer afterwards Mr. Corbet came again to read with Mr. Ness. He
did not perceive any alteration in himself, and indeed his early-matured
character had hardly made progress during the last twelve months whatever
intellectual acquirements he might have made. Therefore it was
astonishing to him to see the alteration in Ellinor Wilkins. She had
shot up f