you please," he said, "I've come to say that I'd rather you gave
Nancy the kitchen-range--I mean, whatever she chooses for her birthday."

"Then you've forgiven her?" asked Miss Unity excitedly.

"Yes," said David. "Good-night, because it's bed-time. Nurse said I
was to go back directly."

He held out his hand, and also raised a pursed-up mouth towards Miss
Unity, which meant that he wished to be kissed.

Feeling the honour deeply she stooped and kissed him, and her eyes
followed the little square figure wistfully as it trotted down the
passage to the nursery; when it disappeared she turned into her room
again with a warmer feeling about her heart than she had known for many
a day.

Three days after this was Nancy's birthday, and although the
kitchen-range did not appear she hopped and skipped and looked so
brimful of delight that David could not help asking: "What are you so
pleased about?"

"Come with me," was Nancy's reply, "and I'll show you Miss Unity's
birthday present. It's the best of all."

She hurried David into the garden, and up to the pig-sty--empty no
longer! There was Antony as lively as ever, and ready to greet his
master with a cheerful grunt!

"There," she said, in the intervals of a dance of triumph, "I and Andrew
fetched him home. Father said we might. I asked Miss Unity to ask him
to have him back for a birthday present. And she did. She was so kind;
and I don't think she's ugly now at all."

Nor did David; and he never said again that the thing he liked least at
Nearminster was Miss Unity, for he had a long memory for benefits as
well as for injuries.

CHAPTER SIX.

ETHELWYN.

"Oh, dear me!" said Pennie, looking at herself in the glass over the
nursery mantel-shelf; "it _is_ ugly, and _so_ uncomfortable. I wish I
needn't wear it."

"It," was Pennie's new winter bonnet, and certainly it was not very
becoming; it was made of black plush with a very deep brim, out of which
her little pointed face peered mournfully, and seemed almost swallowed
up. There was one exactly like it for Nancy, and the bonnets had just
come from Miss Griggs, the milliner at Nearminster, where they had been
ordered a week ago. "Do you come and try yours on, Miss Pennie," said
Nurse as she unpacked them, "there's no getting hold of Miss Nancy."

So Pennie put it on with a little secret hope that it might be a
prettier bonnet than the last; she looked in the glass, and then
followed the exclamat