"It's not the little green pears, then," said Molly, with the sigh of
experience, "because it's always _just_ there, _always_, with them. It
was again yesterday. They're nasty little pears,"--with a touch of
personal resentment.

Uncle Charles smiled at last, but it was not quite his usual smile.

"Miss Molly," said a voice from the door, "your mamma has sent for you."

"It's not bedtime yet."

"Your mamma says you are to come at once," was the reply.

Molly, knowing from experience that an appeal to Charles was useless on
these occasions, wriggled down from her perch rather reluctantly, and
bade her uncle "Good-night."

"Perhaps it will be better to-morrow," she said, consolingly.

"Perhaps," he said, nodding at her; and he took her little head between
his hands, and kissed her. She rubbed his kiss off again, and walked
gravely away. She could not be merry and ride in triumph up-stairs on
kind curvetting Sarah's willing back, while her friend was "uncomferable
inside." There was no galloping down the passage that night, no
pleasantries with the sponge in Molly's tub, no last caperings in light
attire. Molly went silently to bed, and as on a previous occasion when
in great anxiety about Vic, who had thoughtlessly gone out in the
twilight for a stroll, and had forgotten the lapse of time, she added a
whispered clause to her little petitions which the ear of "Ninny" failed
to catch.

Charles recognized, in the way Evelyn had taken Molly from him, that she
was not yet appeased. It should be remembered, in order to do her
justice, that a good woman's means of showing a proper resentment are so
straitened and circumscribed by her conscience that she is obliged, from
actual want of material, to resort occasionally to little acts of
domestic tyranny, small in themselves as midge bites, but, fortunately
for the cause of virtue, equally exasperating. Indeed, it is improbable
that any really good woman would ever so far forget herself as to lose
her temper, if she were once thoroughly aware how much more irritating
in the long-run a judicious course of those small persecutions may be
made, which the tenderest conscience need not scruple to inflict.

Charles was unreasonably annoyed at having Molly taken from him. As he
sat by the fire alone, tired in mind and body, a hovering sense of
cold, and an intense weariness of life took him; and a great longing
came over him like a thirst--a longing for a little of the person