Bessie confessed to her identity, and while Mrs. Stokes wrote the name of Miss Fairfax on one of her own visiting-cards (for Bessie was still unprovided), Burrage begged, as an old servant of the house, to offer her best wishes and to inquire after the health of the squire.  They were interrupted by that rude little boy, who came running back into the court with Sally in pursuit.  He was shouting too at the top of his voice, and making its solemn echoes ring again.  Burrage with sudden gravity watched what would ensue.  Capture ensued, and a second evasion into the street.  Burrage shook her head, as who would say that Sally’s riotous charge was far beyond her control—­which indubitably he was—­and Bessie forgot her errand entirely.  Whose was that little boy, the picture of herself?  Mrs. Stokes recovered her countenance.  They turned to go, and were halfway across the court when the housekeeper called after them in haste:  “Ladies, ladies! my master has come in by the garden way, if you will be pleased to return?” and they returned, neither of them by word or look affording to the other any intimation of her profound reflections.

Mr. Laurence Fairfax received his visitors with a frank welcome, and bade Burrage bring them a cup of tea.  Mrs. Stokes soon engaged him in easy chat, but Bessie sat by in perplexed rumination, trying to reconcile the existence of that little flaxen-haired boy with her preconceived notions of her bachelor uncle.  The view of him had let in a light upon her future that pleased while it confused her.  The reason it pleased her she would discern as her thoughts cleared.  At this moment she was dazzled by a series of surprises.  First, by the sight of that cherub, and then by the order that reigned through this quaint and narrow house where her learned kinsman lived.  They had come up a winding stair into a large, light hall, lined with books and peopled by marble sages on pedestals, from which opened two doors—­the one into a small red parlor where the philosopher ate, the other into a long room looking to the garden and the minster, furnished with the choicest collections of his travelled youth.  The “omnibus” of Canon Fournier used to be all dusty disorder.  Bessie’s silence and her vagrant eyes misled her uncle into the supposition that his old stones, old canvases, and ponderous quartoes interested her curiosity, and noticing that they settled at length, with an intelligent scrutiny, on some object beyond him, he asked what it was, and moved to see.

Nothing rich, nothing rare or ancient—­only the tail and woolly hind-quarters of a toy lamb extruded from the imperfectly closed door of a cupboard below a bookcase.  Instantly he jumped up and went to shut the cupboard; but first he must open it to thrust in the lamb, and out it tumbled bodily, and after it a wagon with red wheels and black-spotted horses harnessed thereto.  As he awkwardly restored them, Mrs. Stokes never moved a muscle, but Bessie smiled