ibed to Cavendish as "about
my own,"--and he blushed a little and contradicted himself. "Yes, to be
sure, he is young: but that makes him only the more sympathetic; and it
was not his advice I was thinking of so much as his sympathy. He is full
of sympathy."

"You have us to sympathise with you," said Minnie. "I don't know what
you want from strangers. We ought to stand by each other, and not care
what outsiders say."

"I hope Theo will never despise the sympathy of his own people, but--a
friend of your own choosing is a great help," said Mrs. Warrender. Yet
she was uneasy. She did not think young Cavendish's sympathy could be on
account of Theo's late bereavement, and what trouble could the boy have
that he confided to Cavendish, and did not mention to his mother? She
became more and more convinced that there must be some scrape, or at
least that something had gone wrong. But save in these speeches about
Cavendish there was no proof of anything of the kind. He gave no further
explanation, however, of the business which had taken him to town, unless
the fact that he drove over to Markland next morning with the half
of the pile of books which he had brought from town, in his dog-cart,
should afford an explanation; and that was so vague that it was hard to
say what it did or did not prove.

He went over to Markland with his books, but left them in the dog-cart,
shy, when he was actually in her presence, of carrying her that bribe.
Books were a bribe to her; she had been out of the way of gratifications
of this kind, and too solitary and forsaken during the latter part of
her married life to know what was going on and to supply herself. She
was sitting with Geoff upon the terrace, which ran along one side of the
house, when Warrender appeared, and both teacher and pupil received him
with something that looked very like relief; for the day was warm, and
the terrace was but ill chosen as a schoolroom. The infinite charm of
a summer day, the thousand invitations to idleness with which the air
is full, the waving trees (though there were not many of them), the
scent of the flowers, the singing of the birds, all distracted Geoff's
attention, and sooth to say his mother's too. She would have been glad
to sit quiet, to escape the boy's questioning, to put away the irksome
lessons which she herself did not much more than understand, and to
which she brought a mind unaccustomed and full of other thoughts. Of
these other thoughts