and whether we are going to Penrith or
any other capital city for the winter." Elinor ended with a laugh.

"So soon?" John said.

"So soon--very much sooner, the first year: with mamma so friendly as
she is and with me so silly, unable to keep myself from smiling at
anybody who smiles at me!"

"Poor Elinor!"

"Oh, you may laugh; but it is a real disadvantage. I am sure there was
not very much smile in me when we came; and yet, notwithstanding, the
first pleasant look is enough for me, I cannot but respond; and I shall
always be so, I suppose," she said, with a sigh.

"I hope so, Elinor. It would be an evil day for all of us if you did not
respond."

"For how many, John? For my mother and--ah, you are so good, more like
my brother than my cousin--for you, perhaps, a little; but what is it to
anybody else in the world whether I smile or sigh? It does not matter,
however," she said, flinging back her head; "there it is, and I can't
help it. If you smile at me I must smile back again--and so we make
friends; and already I get a great deal of advice about little Pippo.
If we live here till he grows up, the same thing will happen as at the
Cottage. We will require to account to everybody for what we do with
him--for the school he goes to, and all he does; to explain why he has
one kind of training or another; and, in short, all that I ran away
from: the world wherever one goes seems to be so much the same."

"The world is very much the same everywhere; and you cannot get out of
it were you to take refuge in a cave on the hill. The best thing is
generally to let it know all that can be known, and so save the
multitude of guesses it always makes."

Elinor looked at him for a moment with her lips pressed tightly
together, and a light in her eyes; then she looked away across the water
to the golden hills, and said nothing; but there was a great deal in
that look of eager contradiction, yet forced agreement, of determination
above all, with which right and wrong had nothing to do.

"Elinor," he said, "do you mean that child to grow up here between your
mother and you--in ignorance of all that there is in the world besides
you two?"

"That child!" she cried. "John, I think you dislike my boy; for, of
course, it is Pippo you mean."

"I wish you would not call him by that absurd name."

"You are hard to please," she said, with an angry laugh. "I think it is
a very sweet little name."

"The child will not always be a