stinacy and his own ten guineas a week, and the sort of
life which he lived in London,--where he dined usually at his club,
and denied himself nothing in the way of pipes, beer, and beefsteaks,
he heard a step behind him, and turning round, saw his elder sister.

"Hugh," she said, "you must not be angry with me."

"But I am angry with you."

"I know you are; but you are unjust. I am doing what I am sure is
right."

"I never saw such a beastly hole as this in all my life."

"I don't think it beastly at all. You'll find that I'll make it nice.
Whatever we want here you shall give us. You are not to think that I
am too proud to take anything at your hands. It is not that."

"It's very like it."

"I have never refused anything that is reasonable, but it is quite
unreasonable that we should go on living in such a place as that, as
though we had three or four hundred a year of our own. If mamma got
used to the comfort of it, it would be hard then upon her to move.
You shall give her what you can afford, and what is reasonable; but
it is madness to think of living there. I couldn't do it."

"You're to have your way at any rate, it seems."

"But you must not quarrel with me, Hugh. Give me a kiss. I don't have
you often with me; and yet you are the only man in the world that I
ever speak to, or even know. I sometimes half think that the bread is
so hard and the water so bitter, that life will become impossible. I
try to get over it; but if you were to go away from me in anger, I
should be so beaten for a week or two that I could do nothing."

"Why won't you let me do anything?"

"I will;--whatever you please. But kiss me." Then he kissed her, as
he stood among Mr. Soames's cabbage-stalks. "Dear Hugh; you are such
a god to me!"

"You don't treat me like a divinity."

"But I think of you as one when you are absent. The gods were never
obeyed when they showed themselves. Let us go and have a walk.
Come;--shall we get as far as Ridleigh Mill?" Then they started
together, and all unpleasantness was over between them when they
returned to the Clock House.

CHAPTER XLIV.

BROOKE BURGESS TAKES LEAVE OF EXETER.

[Illustration]

The time had arrived at which Brooke Burgess was to leave Exeter. He
had made his tour through the county, and returned to spend his two
last nights at Miss Stanbury's house. When he came back Dorothy was
still at Nuncombe, but she arrived in the Close the day before his
departure