Why should we write of children as if they were just like grown-up people?  They are not in the least like, any more than they are like one another; but here they are, and if we can neither love nor understand them, woe betide us!

“No more crying, my dear,” John had said that morning to his youngest daughter.

He had just administered a reproof to her as he sat at breakfast, for some infantile delinquency; and she, sniffing and sobbing piteously, testified a desire to kiss him in token of penitence.

“I’m good now,” she remarked.

“Where’s your pocket-handkerchief?” said her father, with magisterial dignity.

The infant replied that she had lost it, and straightway asked to borrow his.

John lent the article, and having made use of it, she pushed it back with all good faith into his breast-pocket, and repeating, “I’m good now,” received the coveted kiss, and presently after a donation of buttered toast, upon which she became as happy as ever.

In ordinary life it devolves on the mother to lend a handkerchief; but if children have none, there are fathers who can rise to such occasions, and not feel afterwards as if heroic sacrifices had been demanded of them.

John Mortimer felt that Miss Fairbairn had never before greeted him with so much empressement.  They sat down, and she immediately began to talk to him.  A flattering hope that he had known of her presence, and had come at once to see her, gave her just the degree of excitement that she wanted to enable her to produce her thoughts at their best; while he, accustomed by experience to caution, and not ready yet to commit himself, longed to remark that he had been surprised as well as pleased to see her.  But he found no opportunity at first to do it; and in the meantime Emily sat and looked on, and listened to their conversation with an air of easy insouciance very natural and becoming to her.  Emily was seven-and-twenty, and had always been accustomed to defer to Miss Fairbairn as much older as well as wiser than herself; and this deference did not seem out of place, for the large, fair spinster made the young matron look slender and girlish.

John Mortimer remembered how Emily had said a year ago that he could not do better than marry Justina.  He thought she had invited her there to that end; and as he talked he took care to express to her by looks his good-humoured defiance; whereupon she defended herself with her eyes, and punished him by saying—­

“I thought you would come to-day perhaps and see my little house.  Do you like it, John?  I have been in it less than three months, and I am already quite attached to it.  Miss Fairbairn only came last night, and she is delighted with it.”

“Yes,” said Justina, “I only came last night;” and an air of irrepressible satisfaction spread itself over her face—­that Mr. Mortimer should have walked over to see her this very first morning was beyond her utmost hopes.  She had caused Emily to invite her at that particular time that she might often see John; and here he was.