bring your sentinel, Vick?"

He--it is Musgrave, of course--has joined me, and is leaning his flat
back also against the apostle, and, like me, is looking at the mist, at
the red and yellow leaves--at the whole low-spirited panorama.

"She is ill," say I, lamentably, drawing a portrait in lamp-black and
Indian-ink of the whole family; "we are _all_ ill--Barbara is ill!"

"Poor Barbara!"

"She has got a headache."

"POOR Barbara!"

"And I have got a heartache," say I, more for the sake of preserving the
harmony of my sketch, and for making a pendant to Barbara, than because
the phrase accurately describes my state.

"Poor _you_!"

"_Poor me, indeed!_" cry I, with emphasis, and to this day I cannot make
up my mind whether the ejaculation were good grammar or no.

"I have had _such_ bad news," I continue, feeling, as usual, a sensible
relief from the communication of my grief. "Roger is not coming back!"

"_Not at all?_"

The words are the same as those employed by Mrs. Huntley; but there is
much more alacrity and liveliness in the tone.

"_Not at all!_" repeat I, scornfully, looking impatiently at him; "that
is so likely, is not it?"--then "No not _at all_"--I continue,
ironically, "he has run off with some one else--some one _black_!" (with
a timely reminiscence of Bobby's happy flight of imagination).

"Not till _when_, then?"

"Not till after Christmas," reply I, sighing loudly, "which is almost as
bad as not at all."

"I knew _that_!" he says, rather petulantly; "you told me _that_
before!"

"_I told you that before?_" cry I, opening my eyes, and raising my
voice; "why, how could I? I only heard it myself this morning!"

"It was not you, then," he says, composedly; "it must have been some one
else!"

"It _could_ have been no one else," retort I, hastily. "I have told no
one--no one at least from whom _you_ could have heard it."

"All the same, I _did_ hear it" (with a quiet persistence); "now, who
could it have been?" throwing back his head, elevating his chin, and
lifting his eyes in meditation to the great depths of burning red in the
beech's heart, above him--"ah!"--(overtaking the recollection)--"I
know!"

"Who?" say I, eagerly, "not that it _could_ have been any one."

"It was Mrs. Huntley!" he answers, with an air of matter-of-fact
indifference.

I laugh with insulting triumph. "Well, that _is_ a bad hit! What a pity
that you did not fix upon some one else! I have once or twice susp