“Dear Fanny, I am very sorry to bring you so much vexation.  I am afraid it will be a bitter grief to you, but it is only for Conrade’s own sake that I do it.  It was a cruel thing to take a bird’s-nest at all, but worse when he knew that his Aunt Grace was particularly fond of it; and, besides, he had promised not to touch it, and now, saddest of all, he denies having done so.”

“Oh, Conrade, Conrade!” cried Fanny, quite confounded, “You can’t have done like this!”

“So, I have not,” said Conrade, coming up to her, as she held out her hand, positively encouraging him, as Rachel thought, to persist in the untruth.

“Listen, Fanny,” said Rachel.  “I do not wonder that you are unwilling to believe anything so shocking, but I do not come without being only too certain.”  And she gave the facts, to which Fanny listened with pale cheeks and tearful eyes, then turned to the boy, whose hand she had held all the time, and said, “Dear Con, do pray tell me if you did it.”

“I did not,” said Conrade, wrenching his hand away, and putting it behind his back.

“Where’s Hubert?” asked Rachel, looking round, and much vexed when she perceived that Hubert had been within hearing all the time, though to be sure there was some little hope to be founded upon the simplicity of five years old.

“Come here, Hubert dear,” said his mother; “don’t be frightened, only come and tell me where you and Con went yesterday, when the others were playing at bowls.”  Hubert hung his head, and looked at his brother.

“Tell,” quoth Conrade.  “Never mind her, she’s only a civilian.”

“Where did you go, Hubert?”

“Con showed me the little birds in their nest.”

“That is right, Hubert, good little boy.  Did you or he touch the nest?”

“Yes.”  Then, as Conrade started, and looked fiercely at him, “Yes you did, Con, you touched the inside to see what it was made of.”

“But what did you do with it?” asked Rachel.

“Left it there, up in the tree,” said the little boy.

“There, Rachel!” said the mother, triumphantly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Rachel, angrily, “only that Conrade is a worse boy than I had thought him, end has been teaching his little brother falsehood.”

The angry voice set Hubert crying, and little Cyril, who was very soft-hearted, joined in chorus, followed by the baby, who was conscious of something very disagreeable going on in her nursery.  Thereupon, after the apparently most important business of comforting Miss Temple had been gone through, the court of justice adjourned, Rachel opening the door of Conrade’s little room, and recommending solitary imprisonment there till he should be brought to confession.  She did not at all reckon on his mother going in with him, and shutting the door after her.  It was not the popular notion of solitary confinement, and Rachel was obliged to retire, and wait in the drawing-room for a quarter of an hour before Fanny came down, and then it was to say—­