hat, old girl; I shan't try. Live for the next twenty
years under her apron strings, that I may have the chance at the end
of it of cutting some poor devil out of his money! Do you know the
meaning of making a score off your own bat, Martha?"

"No, I don't; and if it's anything you're like to do, I don't think I
should be the better for learning,--by all accounts. And now if you
please, I'll go in."

"Good night, Martha. My love to them both, and say I'll be there
to-morrow exactly at half-past nine. You'd better take it. It won't
turn to slate-stone. It hasn't come from the old gentleman."

"I don't want anything of that kind, Mr. Hugh;--indeed I don't."

"Nonsense. If you don't take it you'll offend me. I believe you think
I'm not much better than a schoolboy still."

"I don't think you're half so good, Mr. Hugh," said the old servant,
sticking the sovereign which Hugh had given her in under her glove as
she spoke.

On the next morning that other visit was made at the brick house, and
Miss Stanbury was again in a fuss. On this occasion, however, she was
in a much better humour than before, and was full of little jokes as
to the nature of the visitation. Of course, she was not to see her
nephew herself, and no message was to be delivered from her, and none
was to be given to her from him. But an accurate report was to be
made to her as to his appearance, and Dorothy was to be enabled to
answer a variety of questions respecting him after he was gone. "Of
course, I don't want to know anything about his money," Miss Stanbury
said, "only I should like to know how much these people can afford
to pay for their penny trash." On this occasion she had left the
room and gone up-stairs before the knock came at the door, but she
managed, by peeping over the balcony, to catch a glimpse of the
"flipperty-flopperty" hat which her nephew certainly had with him on
this occasion.

Hugh Stanbury had great news for his sister. The cottage in which
Mrs. Stanbury lived at Nuncombe Putney, was the tiniest little
dwelling in which a lady and her two daughters ever sheltered
themselves. There was, indeed, a sitting-room, two bed-rooms, and a
kitchen; but they were all so diminutive in size that the cottage was
little more than a cabin. But there was a house in the village, not
large indeed, but eminently respectable, three stories high, covered
with ivy, having a garden behind it, and generally called the Clock
House, because there ha