, which would have better become a troop of
boys than a pair of girls.

"Little May," who, in spite of her height, was still in frocks an inch
from the ground, was not troubled by any such scruples. She scampered up
to her mother, and hailed her breathlessly--"Mother, we want you to let
us--Rose and me--go with Ella and Phyllis Carey a walk to the Beeches.
Ella says she saw some periwinkles and young ferns there, and we need,
oh! ever so many fresh roots for the rockery. We should have gone
without coming home to tell you, because you wouldn't mind, but we might
have kept tea waiting, and we'll be horribly late. Besides, we are not
coming home for tea; Ella and Phyllis say we must go up with them to the
Bank House."

"No, no, my dears, you can't do that," said Mrs. Millar, hurriedly but
decidedly. "I am sorry that you should be disappointed, but you must not
think of such a thing. Ella and Phyllis don't understand--don't
know--that their mother is particularly engaged this afternoon. She will
not wish to have people in the house, not even in the schoolroom."

Rose and May looked in wonder at their mother, discomposed enough in her
own person, sitting leaning back in her chair doing nothing; she whose
motherly hands were wont to be busy with some little bit of sewing or
knitting.

Annie, too, was sitting idle at a short distance, with her hat thrown on
the bed, but still wearing her jacket; and Dora, in her walking dress,
was standing like a lady-in-waiting, or a sentry, behind Mrs. Millar's
chair.

Annie and Dora remained silent, looking at the intruders in a peculiar
manner. At the same time the first pair did not tell the second more or
less curtly, as the elder girls had been in the habit of doing not so
very long ago, to go away and leave grown-up people to finish important
discussions in peace.

What other new thing could have come about? Was there a fresh wooer in
the field, a second offer of marriage to be laid at reluctant feet? Was
it Annie, their beauty, who was in request this time? Who was the lover?
not Cyril Carey, with his plush waistcoat and gold chains and odious
snuff-box? He had no means of keeping a wife, unless his father took him
into partnership in the bank, and their father would not hear of Cyril;
besides, Annie held him in supreme disdain. She had more patience with
Tom Robinson and "the shop" than with the nineteenth century dandy, whom
she pronounced a mistaken revival of one of the ma