er hidden anything from them before?

And yet she took the stolen pleasure in trembling every day, and tried
to believe Florence when she said there was no harm in it, that every
one did so, and that young people must be young!

CHAPTER IX.

AWKWARD MEETINGS.

"WELL, to be sure, who would have thought of such a treat! This is a
pleasure indeed! Rose, Rose, whom do you think we have here?"

"How natural it all do look to be sure. There, Ambrose, there's the very
rose tree I have so often told you of."

"Why, mother has described it all so well, I could have found my way
blindfold."

The speaker was a tall, fair-faced young man, looking, in Charlotte
Lee's eyes, like one of the young gentlemen from the university, but
with something grave and deep about his face, and by him stood his
little mother in the neatest of black silk dresses, with something
sweet and childlike about her face still, though there were some
middle-aged lines in it. She had once been the Amy Lee of Langley. She
had married a schoolmaster, Mr. Cuthbert, and this was their only son.
He had distinguished himself in all his examinations, and at the same
time had shown so deep an interest in missions to the heathen, and had
done so much to make the boys of the school care for them, that when
there was a question of choosing a lad as a missionary student, whose
expenses would be paid by subscriptions of the clergy in the diocese, at
the great college of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, the vicar of his
parish had three years ago proposed Ambrose Cuthbert as the fittest
youth he knew. He had just finished his terms at the college, and was on
his way home before going out to Rupertsland, having met his mother at
the house of his father's brother in London. They had found out that an
excursion train would enable them to run down to Langley and spend a few
hours there; and Mrs. Cuthbert, who had always said her son must not
leave England without having seen her old home, her brother and sisters,
was delighted with the opportunity, and here they were, the brother and
the three sisters all together, hardly knowing what they said in their
eager joy.

"And my little Amy, where is she? You have not seen your namesake, Amy,"
said the father, who had come in bare armed and floury.

"She is not come back yet from poor little Teddy's," said Aunt Rose.
"The child goes to teach, and see to, a poor little sick lad in a
cottage every day, Amy. We like her