“And what do ye think is the raison that the misthress thrates little Miss Agnes the way she does?”

“Well, I can hardly tell you, Bridget.  In the first place, I have often heard her say that she couldn’t abide girls, and bating other reasons, I think she would have been disappointed on her own account, you know, to have the first child a girl.  But, besides this, I have heard that Mr. Benjamin Elwyn quite forgave Mr. Harry, and promised him that if his oldest child was a boy, and he named it after him, he would leave him the bulk of his property.  I cannot tell you how bitterly disappointed my young mistress was, when her first born proved to be a girl.  She was but sixteen years old then, you know, Bridget, and she acted like a cross, spoiled baby.  She cried herself into a fever, and she wouldn’t let the poor, helpless baby, come into her sight.  I think she never loved her; and from the time of Master Lewie’s birth, she has seemed to dislike her more and more.”

“But how the father loved her, Mrs. McCrae!”

“Aye, indeed he did; he never could be easy a minute without her.  It was a sore day for my poor bairn, when it pleased God to take her father; poor man!  But He knows best, Bridget, and He orders all things right.”

Here Mammy was summoned by the bell, and despatched to bring little Agnes down; to accompany her aunt and cousins to their home.

As Agnes was riding along, seated so comfortably by the side of her kind aunt, in the large covered sleigh, with the rosy, smiling faces of her little cousins, Grace and Effie, opposite her, she could scarcely believe that she was the same little girl, who, but an hour or two before, was walking so sadly up and down the desolate North Room, and trying to persuade herself that she was “not alone.”  Agnes was naturally of a lively, cheerful disposition, and like any other little girl of six years of age, she soon forgot past sorrow in present pleasure, though, at times, the sudden remembrance of her dear little baby brother, lying so ill at home, would cause a sigh to chase away the smile of pleasure beaming on her lovely face.

It was but little more than two miles from “The Hemlocks,” Mrs. Elwyn’s residence, to “Brook Farm,” the home of the Wharton’s, and, as Matthew had received orders to drive very rapidly, it seemed to Agnes that her ride was just begun, when they turned into the lane that led up to her Uncle Wharton’s house.  And now the pillars of the piazza appear between the trees, and now the breakfast room windows, and more bright young faces are looking out, and little chubby hands are clapped together, as the sleigh is discovered coming rapidly up the lane, and the cry resounds through the house, “They’ve come! they’ve come! and Agnes is with them!”