The girls seated themselves together on a rustic bench, tore open the thick letter, and acquainted themselves with its contents.

  “Dearest,—­I’m coming home to-morrow night. Must see the mater. 
  Have got into a fresh scrape.  Don’t tell anyone but May—­I mean about
  the scrape.

  “Your devoted brother,

  “LOFTUS.”

Catherine read this letter twice, once to herself, then aloud for Mabel’s benefit.

“Now, what’s up?” exclaimed Mabel.  “It must be very bad.  He never calls you ‘dearest;’ unless it’s awfully bad.  Does he, Kitty?”

“No,” said Catherine.  “Poor mother,” she added then, and she gave a profound and most ungirlish sigh.

“Why, Catherine, you have been grumbling at mother all day!  You have been feeling so cross about her.”

“You never will understand, Mabel!  I grumble at mother for her frettiness, but I love her, I pity her for her sorrows.”

Mabel looked full into her sister’s face.

“I confess I don’t understand you,” she said.  “I can’t love one side of a person, and hate the other side; I don’t know that I love or hate anybody very much.  It’s more comfortable not to do things very much, isn’t it, Kitty?”

“I suppose so,” replied Catherine, “but I can’t say.  That isn’t my fashion.  I do everything very much.  I love, I hate, I joy or sorrow, all in extremes.  Perhaps it isn’t a good way, but it’s the only way I’ve got.  Now let us talk about Loftus.  I wonder if he is going to stay long, and if he will make himself pleasant.”

“No fear of that,” responded Mabel.  “He’ll be as selfish and exacting as ever he can be.  He’ll keep mother in a state of fret, and you in a state of excitement, and he’ll insist on smoking a cigarette close to the new cretonne curtains in the drawing-room, and he’ll make me go out in the hot part of the day to gather fresh strawberries for him.  Oh, I do think brothers are worries!  I wish he wasn’t coming.  We are very peaceful and snug here.  And mother’s face doesn’t looked harassed as it often did when we were in town.  I do wish Loftus wasn’t coming to upset everything.  It was he turned us away from our nice, sprightly, jolly London, and now, surely he need not follow us into the country.  Yes, Catherine, what words of wisdom or reproof are going to drop from your lips?”

“Not any,” replied Catherine.  “I can’t make blind people see, and I can’t bring love when there is no love to bring.  Of course, it is different for me.”

“How is it different for you?”

“I love Loftus.  He gives me pain, but that can be borne, for I love him.”

At this moment Mrs. Bertram’s tall figure was seen standing on the steps of the house.  It was getting dark; a heavy dew was falling, and the air was slightly, pleasantly chill after the intense heat of the day.  Mrs. Bertram had wrapped a white fleecy cloud over her head.  She descended the steps, stood on the broad gravel sweep, and looked around her.