ened. Have
you left the little boy at Brand Hall? And is it really Mr. Brand's
little boy?"

"Yes, it is, and I have left him with his father," said Janetta,
gravely. "As it is getting late, Nora, we had better make the best of
our way home."

"You will let me accompany you?" said Cuthbert, eagerly, while Nora
looked a little bit inclined to pout at her sister's serious tone. "It
is, as you say, rather late; and you have a long walk before you."

"Thank you, but I could not think of troubling you. My sister and I are
quite accustomed to going about by ourselves. We escort each other,"
said Janetta, smiling, so that he should not set her down as utterly
ungracious.

"I am a good walker," said Cuthbert, coloring a little. He was half
afraid that they thought his lameness a disqualification for
accompanying them. "I do my twenty miles a day quite easily."

"Thank you," Janetta said again. "But I could not think of troubling
you. Besides, Nora and I are so well used to these woods, and to the
road between them and Beaminster, that we really do not require an
escort."

A compromise was finally effected. Cuthbert walked with them to the end
of the wood, and the girls were to be allowed to pursue their way
together along the Beaminster road. He made himself very agreeable in
their walk through the wood, and did not leave them, without a hope that
he might be allowed one day to call upon his newly-discovered cousins.

"He has adopted us, apparently, as well as yourself," said Nora, as the
two girls tramped briskly along the Beaminster road. "He seems to forget
that _we_ are not his relations."

"He is very pleasant and friendly," said Janetta.

"But why did you say he might call?" pursued Nora. "I thought that you
would say that we did not have visitors--or something of that sort."

"My dear Nora! But we do have visitors."

"Yes; but not of that kind."

"Don't you want him to come?" said Janetta, in some wonderment; for it
had struck her that Nora had shown an unusual amount of friendliness to
Mr. Cuthbert Brand.

"No, I don't," said Nora, almost passionately. "I _don't_ want to see
him down in our shabby, untidy little drawing-room, to hear mamma talk
about her expenses and papa's difficulties--to see all that tribe of
children in their old frocks--to see the muddle in which we live! I
don't want him there at all."

"Dear Nora, I don't think that the Brands have been accustomed to live
in any very grand way.