different. I should be just as much
interested in Miss Sefton if she were plain. I suppose you mean to be
charmed with her conversation, and to find all her remarks witty because
she has _les beaux yeux_."

"I scorn to take notice of such spiteful remarks," returned Tom, with a
shrug. "Girls are venomous to each other. I believe they hate to hear
one another praised, even by a brother."

"Hold your tongue, Tom," was the rejoinder. "It takes my breath away to
argue with you up this hill. I am not too ill-natured to give up my own
bed to Miss Sefton. Let us hurry on, there's a good boy, or they will
arrive before us."

As this request coincided with Tom's private wishes, he condescended to
walk faster; and the brother and sister were soon at the top of the
hill, and had turned into a pretty private road bordered with trees,
with detached houses standing far back, with long, sloping strips of
gardens. The moon had now risen, and Bessie could distinctly see a
little group of girls, with shawls over their heads, standing on the top
of a flight of stone steps leading down to a large shady garden
belonging to an old-fashioned house. The front entrance was round the
corner, but the drawing-room window was open, and the girls had gained
the road by the garden way, and stood shivering and expectant; while the
moon illumined the grass terraces that ran steeply from the house, and
shone on the meadow that skirted the garden.

"Run in, girls; you will catch cold," called out Bessie; but her prudent
suggestion was of no avail, for a tall, lanky girl rushed into the road
with the rapturous exclamation, "Why, it is our Bessie after all, though
she looked so tall in the moonlight, and I did not know Tom's new
ulster." And here Bessie was fallen upon and kissed, and handed from one
to another of the group, and then borne rapidly down the steps and
across the terrace to the open window.

"Here she is, mother; here is our Bessie, not a bit the worse. And Hatty
ought to be ashamed of herself for making us all miserable!" exclaimed
Katie.

"My Hatty sha'n't be scolded. Mother, dear, if you only knew how sweet
home looks after the Sheen Valley! Don't smother me any more, girls. I
want to tell you something that will surprise you;" and Bessie, still
holding her mother's hand, but looking at Hatty, gave a rapid and
somewhat indistinct account of her meeting with Edna Sefton.

"And she will have my room, mother," continued Bessie, a litt