just stop at home, and Miss Sefton shall be disappointed.' I wonder
how you would like that?"

"That would not please me, either. I am not so selfish as that. Oh,
Bessie, do tell me how I am to conquer this nervous dread of losing you.
It is not selfishness, for I do love to have treats; but when you go
away I don't seem to take any pleasure in anything; it is all so flat
and disagreeable. Sometimes I lie awake and cry when I think what I
should do if you were to die. I know how silly and morbid it is, but how
am I to help it?" And here Hatty broke down, and hid her face on
Bessie's shoulder.

CHAPTER VII.

IN THE KENTISH LANES.

Bessie did not make any answer for a minute or two, but her eyes were a
little dim as she heard Hatty sob.

"I must not break the bruised reed," she said to herself. "Hatty's world
is a very little one; she is not strong enough to come out of herself,
and take wider views; when she loves people, she loves them somehow in
herself; she can't understand the freedom of an affection that can be
happy in the absence of its object. I am not like Hatty; but then our
natures are different, and I must not judge her. What can I say that
will help her?"

"Can't you find anything to say to me, Bessie dear?"

"Plenty; but you must wait for it to come. I was just thinking for
you--putting myself in your place, and trying to feel as you do."

"Well!"

"I was getting very low down when you spoke; it was quite creepy among
the shadows. 'So this is how Hatty feels,' I said to myself, and did not
like it at all."

"You would not like to be me, Bessie."

"What an ungrammatical sentence! Poor little me! I should think not; I
could not breathe freely in such a confined atmosphere. Why don't you
give it up and let yourself alone? I would not be only a bundle of fears
and feelings if I were you."

"Oh, it is easy to talk, but it is not quite so easy to be good."

"I am not asking you to be good. We can't make ourselves good, Hatty;
that lies in different hands. But why don't you look on your unhappy
nature as your appointed cross, and just bear with yourself as much as
you expect others to bear with you? Why not exercise the same patience
as you expect to be shown to you?"

"I hardly understand you, Bessie. I ought to hate myself for my
ill-temper and selfishness, ought I not?"

"It seems to me that there are two sorts of hatred, and only one of them
is right. We all have two natures. Even a