em and play with
them, and let them mend his clothes and knit his stockings as other
sisters did. And, instead, they had to get used to the strange idea of
the dead unknown wife, and the little son for whose sake they were to
grow up into wise sober women before they had done with being little
girls. What wonder that Angel looked pale and grave after a wakeful
night, and that Betty felt that madcap ways and tumbled curls must
cease from this day forward.

Little Nancy Rogers, hurrying home so as to get there before Peter,
felt herself a person of importance, with such news to tell. Her
father was gardener at Oakfield Place, the most important building in
the village, an ivied house with a garden full of sweet, old-fashioned
flowers, planted by the late mistress who had died six years before.
The present owner, Captain Maitland, was a naval officer, away with his
ship, and the house was empty except for the Rogers family, who lived
in some of the back rooms that Mrs. Rogers might keep the place in
order. Before she married she had been maid to Miss Amelia Crayshaw,
and still came in now and then when Penny wanted extra help; and her
children and the two little ladies had been playfellows, for Angel and
Betty had no girl friends near their home, and, when Cousin Amelia
would let them, were happy enough to spend their holidays running about
the old garden with the little Rogers, getting mushrooms and
blackberries under Peter's charge, or, on wet days, playing 'hide and
seek' about the empty house. And even Cousin Amelia, who was very
particular about their manners and the company they kept, admitted that
Martha Rogers' children could not teach them any harm. Indeed, it was
Betty who now and then led the whole party into scrapes, for which,
however, she was always ready enough to bear the blame.

So that there was no house in Oakfield where the news of Mr. Bernard's
death and the arrival of his little son was received with more interest
than at the Rogers', even though Nancy did get a scolding for going off
to the cottage and taking up Miss Betty's time without a word to any
one at home. But Nancy was the baby and a little spoilt even by her
sensible mother, and it took a good deal of scolding to put her out of
conceit with herself; so, though she had strict orders on no account to
go to the cottage again till she was sent for, she managed to be by the
roadside at that hour in the evening when Mr. Crayshaw's post-ch