that morning to Marmy, how lovely it would be if
some day we had a house like this for our home, and how he and we would
pay visits to each other?'

Frances's face grew rather pink.

'Do you mean if,' she said, her voice growing lower and lower--'if Lady
Myrtle _left_ it to us, to you? I don't like, Jass, to'----

'Oh, how matter-of-fact you are!' said Jacinth impatiently; 'I don't
mean anything but what I say. Lady Myrtle says she is going to invite us
all--papa and mamma and us three--to stay with her when they come home,
and it's a very big house, and she has no relations she cares for. It
might get to be almost like our home. And Lady Myrtle is the sort of
person that often speaks of getting old and--and dying. I daresay she
makes plans for what she'd like to be done with her things--I know I
should--though I hope she'll live twenty years, and I daresay she will,
dear old thing.'

Frances would have accepted this simply enough, and after all, Jacinth
felt as she said. The thought that 'some day' Robin Redbreast might be
her home would be quite enough for her, and she already loved her kind
old friend sincerely. But one sentence in her sister's speech startled
Frances with a quick sharp stab: 'No relations that she cares for.'

Somehow, in the pleasure and excitement of coming to Robin Redbreast,
she had forgotten about the Harpers. Now all her old feelings of
chivalry for them, and wishes that she could be the means of helping
them, rushed back upon her, and she felt as if she had, in some queer
way, been faithless, even though she was debarred from doing anything,
debarred even from telling Jacinth all she knew. And Frances was
unaccustomed to hide her feelings; her face at once grew grave and
almost distressed looking.

'What is the matter, Frances?' said Jacinth. 'You are such a kill-joy.
What are you looking so reproachful about?'

'I didn't mean--I'm not looking reproachful,' said Frances; 'it was
only--oh, just something of my own I was thinking of.'

'Well then, I wish you would think of something cheerful, and not screw
your face up as if you were going to cry. I don't want Lady Myrtle to
think we've been quarrelling up here.'

Frances swallowed down a lump in her throat, which was far too apt to
come there on small provocation.

'Of course Lady Myrtle would never think such a thing, or if she did,
she would only think I was naughty or silly or something. She'd never
dream of _you_ being anything