“As for Emily needing confidence,” whispered Brandon to Alice Melville, “that is a splendid absurdity.  These colonial children do not know what bashfulness or timidity means—­not but what I am very fond of all the Phillipses, and Emily is my favourite.”

“She is mine, too,” said Elsie; “she is an affectionate and an original child, with quick perceptions and quick feelings.  I believe she is very fond of me; I like little people to be fond of me.”

“Not big people, too?” said Brandon, with an expression half comic, half sad.

Elsie blushed.  Emily came up to her dear friend, Mr. Brandon, and her favourite, Alice.  “Aunt Harriett is going to play and sing now, and after that, Alice, you must sing.  I like your songs better than Aunt Harriett’s twenty times, because I can hear all your words.”

“I cannot sing,” said Elsie, “I never had a lesson in either music or singing in my life.”

“Oh! but you sing very nicely; indeed she does, Mr. Brandon:  and there is not a thing that happens that she cannot turn into a song or a poem, just like what there is in books, and you would think it very pretty if you only heard them.  We get her to bring her work into our nursery in the evenings, and there we have stories and songs from her.”

“You are in luck,” said Mr. Brandon; “but now that you have told us of Miss Alice Melville’s accomplishments, we must be made to share in your good fortune.”

“No, indeed,” said Elsie; “as Burns says, ‘crooning to a body’s sel’ does weel eneugh;’ but my crooning is not fit for company, except that of uncritical children.”

“You know I am as uncritical as the veriest child,” said Brandon.  “I must have given you a very erroneous impression of my character, if you can feel the least awe of me; but I recollect your twisting a very innocent speech of mine, the first evening I had the pleasure of meeting you, into something very severe.  That was rather ill natured.”

“Alice is not ill-natured at all,” said Emily.  “Aunt Harriett sometimes is.  She is looking cross at me now for talking while she is singing.”

“It is very rude in all of us,” said Elsie, composing herself to give attention to Miss Phillips’s song.

“I tell you what, you dear old boy,” whispered Emily.  “I don’t think Alice will sing here, or tell you any of her lovely stories; but I will smuggle you into the nursery some day, and you will just have a treat.”

“What have I done since I came to England,” said Brandon in the same undertone, “that I should have been banished in this cruel way from the nursery?  Did you ever refuse me admission at Wiriwilta—­did not I kiss every one of you in your little nightclothes, and see you tucked into bed?  If I was worthy of that honour then, why am I debarred from it now?”

“You saved our lives, papa says—­you and Peggy—­and so we always liked you; and, for my part, I like you as well as ever I did now; but we are in England now, and it is so different from Wiriwilta—­dear old Wiriwilta, I wish I was back to it.  I wish papa was not so rich, for then we would go back again; but it’s no use as long as he has got enough of money to stay here.  The letters that came the other day—­you recollect.”