ay go with the lady, as she is so kind as to wish
it."

Lady Carse moved off in silence; and the children, tightly grasping each
other's hands, followed as if going to a funeral.

"Jump, my dears," said papa, when they had reached the down. "Jump
about: you may be merry now."

Both looked as if they were immediately going to cry. "What now, Adam?"
stooping down that the child might speak confidentially to him, but
saying to Lady Carse as he did so, that it was necessary sometimes to
condescend to the weakness of children. "Adam, tell me why you are not
merry, when I assure you you may."

"I can't," whispered Adam.

"You can't! What a sudden fit of humility this boy has got, that he
can't do anything to-day. Unless, however, it be true, well-grounded
humility, I fear--"

Mamma now tried what she could do. She saw, by Lady Carse's way of
walking on by herself, that she was displeased; and, under the
inspiration of this grief, Mrs Ruthven so strove to make her children
agreeable by causing them to forget everything disagreeable, that they
were soon like themselves again. Mamma permitted them to look for hens'
eggs among the whins, because they had heard that when she was a little
girl she used to look for them among bushes in a field. There was no
occasion to tell them at such a critical moment for their spirits that
it was mid-winter, or that whins would be found rather prickly by
poultry, or that there were no hens in the island but Mrs Macdonald's
well sheltered pets. They were told that the first egg they found was
to be presented to Lady Carse; and they themselves might divide the
next.

Their mother's hope, that if they did not find hens' eggs, they might
light upon something else, was not disappointed. Perhaps she took care
that it should not. Adam found a barley-cake on the sheltered side of a
bush; and it was not long before Kate found one just as good. They were
desired to do with these what they would have done with the eggs--
present one to Lady Carse and divide the other. As they were very
hungry, they hastened to fulfil the condition of beginning to eat.
Again grasping one another's hands, they walked with desperate courage
up to Lady Carse, and held out a cake, without yet daring, however, to
look up.

"Well, what is that?" she asked sharply.

"A barley-cake."

"Who bade you bring it to me?"

"Mamma."

"You would not have brought it if mamma had not bid you?"

"No."

"Allow