oment Frank Jones was away from Castle Morony, working
hard on his father's behalf.

And so were the girls working hard--making the butter, and cooking
the meat, and attending to the bedrooms. And Peter was busy with them
as their lieutenant. It might be thought that the present was no time
for love-making, and that Captain Clayton could not have been in the
mood. But it may be observed that at any period of special toil in a
family, when infinitely more has to be done than at any other time,
then love-making will go on with more than ordinary energy. Edith
was generally to be found with her hair tucked tight off her face
and enveloped in a coarse dairymaid's apron, and Ada, when she ran
downstairs, would do so with a housemaid's dusting-brush at her
girdle, and they were neither of them, when so attired, in the
least afraid of encountering Captain Clayton as he would come out
from their father's room. All the world knew that they were being
boycotted, and very happy the girls were during the process. "Poor
papa" did not like it so well. Poor papa thought of his banker's
account, or rather of that bank at which there was, so to say, no
longer any account. But the girls were light of heart, and in the
pride of their youth. But, alas! they had both of them blundered
frightfully. It was Edith, Edith the prudent, Edith the wise, Edith,
who was supposed to know everything, who had first gone astray in
her blundering, and had taken Ada with her; but the story with its
details must be told.

"My pet," she said to her elder sister, as they were standing
together at the kitchen dresser, "I know he means to speak to you
to-day."

"What nonsense, Edith!"

"It has to be done some day, you know. And he is just the man to come
upon one in the time of one's dire distress. Of course we haven't got
a halfpenny now belonging to us. I was thinking only the other day
how comfortable it is that we never go out of the house because we
haven't the means to buy boots. Now Captain Clayton is just the man
to be doubly attracted by such penury."

"I don't know why a man is to make an offer to a girl just because he
finds her working like a housemaid."

"I do. I can see it all. He is just the man to take you in his arms
because he found you peeling potatoes."

"I beg he will do nothing of the kind," said Ada. "He has never said
a word to me, or I to him, to justify such a proceeding. I should at
once hit him over the head with my brush."