front, I know," shouted out Cissy, interrupting her and
clapping her hands like Liz, her whilom sad little face beaming with
gladness. "I see him, I see him, and he's dot Teddy in his arms!"

"So he has," said Conny, carried away by the excitement out of her
ordinarily staid and decorous demeanour. "Let us all run down and meet
him!"

Her suggestion was hailed with a shout of exclamation; and, the next
moment, forgetful of the falling flakes and the risk of getting damp
feet, which Conny the careful was ever warning the others against, the
three had run out into the hall, opened the outside door of the porch,
which the wind banged against the side of the passage with a thump that
shook the house, and were racing towards the entrance gate over the
white expanse of lawn, now quite covered with some six inches of snow.

Just as the little girls reached the gate, all breathless in a batch, it
was opened from without, and they were confronted by their father with
Master Teddy on his shoulder, still holding the kitten in his arms;
while, close behind, followed Jupp taking care of Mary the nurse.

"Oh, papa!" cried Conny, Cissy, and Liz in chorus, hanging on to their
father's coat-tails as if afraid he would get away from them again; and
so, in a motley procession, Teddy apparently king of the situation and
Jupp and Mary still bringing up the rear, they marched into the hall,
where Molly the cook, having heard the door bang when the little girls
rushed out, was waiting with a light to receive them.

"Take the porter to the kitchen, Molly," said Mr Vernon, "and give him,
mind, a good cup of tea for bringing home Master Teddy. But for his
kindness we might not perhaps have seen the little truant again--to-
night, at all events."

"Lawks a mercy, sir!" ejaculated Molly with open-mouth astonishment,
curtseying and smiling: "you doant mean that?"

"Yes, I do," went on Mr Vernon. "Mind you take every care of him, for
the porter is a right good fellow."

"Why, sir, I didn't do nothing to speak of, sir," said Jupp, quite
abashed at being made so much of. "The young gen'leman commed to me,
and in course, seeing as how he were such a little chap and all alone
out in the cold, I couldn't do nothing else."

"Never mind that; I'm very much obliged to you, and so are all of us.
What you've got to do now is to go with Molly and have a good cup of
tea, the same as we are going to have after that long tramp in the
snow," said t