in presently,"
Chatty replied.

"I wish he would have stayed, if it had even been in the grounds,
to-day," said Minnie. "It will look so strange to see him walking about
as if nothing had happened."

"He has been very good; he has conformed to all our little rules," said
the mother, with a sigh.

"Little rules, mamma? Don't you think it of importance, then, that every
respect----"

"My dear," said Mrs. Warrender, "I am tired of hearing of every respect.
Theo was always respectful and affectionate. I would not misconstrue him
even if it should prove that he has taken a walk."

"On the day of dear papa's funeral!" cried Minnie, with a voice unmoved.

Mrs. Warrender turned away without any reply; partly because the tears
sprang into her eyes at the matter-of-fact statement, and partly because
her patience was exhausted.

"Have you settled, mamma, what he is going to do?" said Chatty.

"It is not for me to decide. He is twenty-one; he is his own master. You
have not," Mrs. Warrender said, "taken time to think yet of the change
in our circumstances. Theo is now master here. Everything is his to do
as he pleases."

"Everything!" said the girls in chorus, opening their eyes.

"I mean, of course, everything but what is yours and what is mine. You
know your father's will. He has been very just, very kind, as he always
was." She paused a little, and then went on: "But your brother, as you
know, is now the master here. We must understand what his wishes are
before we can settle on anything."

"Why shouldn't we go on as we always have done?" said Minnie. "Theo is
too young to marry; besides, it would not be decent for a time, even if
he wanted to, which I am sure he does not. I don't see why he should
make any change. There is nowhere we can be so well as at home."

"Oh, nowhere!" said Chatty.

Their mother sat and looked at them, with a dull throb in her heart.
They had sentiment and right on their side, and nature too. Everybody
would agree that for a bereaved family there was no place so good as
home,--the house in which they were born and where they had lived all
their life. She looked at them blankly, feeling how unnatural, how
almost wicked, was the longing in her own mind to get away, to escape
into some place where she could take large breaths and feel a wide sky
over her. But how was she to say it, how even to conclude what she had
been saying, feeling how inharmonious it was with everything around?

"Sti