at
her feet. "Just so Janie would have sat, if she had lived," he thought.
"I should often have seen something like this here, as the children grew
older." And while he listened to the account given by the two boys of
their doings, he could not help looking at Emily, and thinking, as he
had sometimes done before, that she bore, in some slight degree, a
resemblance to his wife--his wife whom he had idealised a good deal
lately--and who generally, in his thought, presented herself to him as
she had done when, as a mere lad, he first saw her. A dark-haired and
grey-eyed young woman, older than himself, as a very young man's first
admiration frequently is. He felt that Emily was more graceful, had a
charm of manner and a sweetness of nature that Janie had never
possessed. He seldom allowed himself to admit even to his own mind that
his wife had been endowed with very slight powers of loving. On that
occasion, however, the fact was certainly present to his thought; "But,"
he cogitated, "we had no quarrels. A man may sometimes do with but
little love from his wife, if he is quite sure she loves no other man
more."

He started from his reverie as Crayshaw ceased to speak. "I thought you
had more sense," he said, with the smile still on his mouth that had
come while he mused on Emily. "And now don't flatter yourself that you
are to be torn from your friends and hurled on the Continent against
your will. Nothing of the sort, my boy! You have a more difficult part
to play; you are to do as you please."

Crayshaw's countenance fell a little.

"Is George really angry, sir?" he asked.

"He did not seem so. He remarked that you were nearly seventeen, and
that he did not specially care about this journey."

Something very like disappointment stole over Cray's face
then--something of that feeling which now and then shows us that it is
rather a blow to us to have, all on a sudden, what we wanted. What would
we have, then? We cannot exactly tell; but it seems _that_ was not it.

"Your brother thought you and Johnnie might be with me, and came to ask.
I, of course, felt sure you were here. If you decide to go with him, you
are to be back by six o'clock; if not, you go to Mr. Tikey on Monday.
Now, my boy, I am not going to turn you out-of-doors. So adieu."

Thus saying, because Emily's little charge was awake, and she had risen
and was taking leave of the girls, he brought her down-stairs, and,
wishing her good-bye' at his gate, we