As soon as dinner was over, the boat was brought out, and they spent an hour or two on the river; but the weather had already begun to change, and, to avoid the approaching storm, they were obliged to leave the farm much earlier than they had intended, and hasten towards home.  When they approached the Cottage, Lucia begged to be set down, that her friends might not be hindered by turning out of their way to take her quite home; Mr. Bellairs drew up, therefore, at the end of the lane, and Lucia sprang out.  Mr. Percy, however, insisted on going with her.  He dismounted and led his horse beside her.

“I am sure you will be wet,” she said; “you forget that I am a Canadian girl, and quite used to running about by myself.”

“That may be very well,” he answered, “when you have no one at your disposal for an escort, but at present the case is different.”

She blushed a little and smiled.  “In England would people be shocked at my going wherever I please alone?”

“I don’t know; I believe I am forgetting England and everything about it.  Do you know that I ought to be there now?”

“Ought? that is a very serious word.  But you are not going yet?”

“Not just yet.  Miss Costello, your mother is an Englishwoman, why don’t you persuade her to bring you to England.”

“My mother will never go to England.”  Lucia repeated the words slowly like a lesson learned by rote; and as she did so, an old question rose again in her mind,—­why not?

“Yet you long to go—­you have told me so.”

“Yes, oh!  I do long to go.  It seems to me like Fairyland.”

It was Mr. Percy’s turn to smile now.  “Not much like Fairyland,” he answered; “not half so much like it as your own Canada.”

“Well, perhaps I shall see it some day, but then alone.  Without mamma, I should not care half so much.”

“Are you still so much a child?  ‘Without mamma’ would be no great deprivation to most young ladies.”

“I cannot understand that.  But then we have always been together; we could hardly live apart.”

“Not even if you had—­Doctor Morton for instance, to take care of you?”

Lucia laughed heartily at the idea, and Mr. Percy laughed too, though his sentence had begun seriously enough.  They were now at the gate, he bade her good-bye, and springing on his horse, went away at a pace which was meant to carry off a considerable amount of irritation against himself.  “I had nearly made a pretty fool of myself,” he soliloquised.  “It is quite time I went away from here.  But what a sweet little piece of innocence she is, and so lovely!  I do not believe anything more perfect ever was created.  Pshaw! who would have thought of my turning sentimental?”

As Lucia turned from the gate, Margery put her head round the corner of the house, and beckoned.

“Your ma’s lying down, Miss Lucia,—­at least I guess so,—­and she doesn’t expect you yet, and I’ve something to tell you.”