Mary was struck, also, with the pretty, modest looks of the little underling, and remarked on them as they proceeded to the inspection of the next house.

‘Yes,’ said Louis, ’Charlotte is something between a wood sorrel and a five-plume moth.  Tom Madison, as usual, shows exquisite taste.  She is a perfect Lady of Eschalott.’

‘Now, Louis!’ said his aunt, standing still, and really looking annoyed, ’you know I cannot encourage any such thing.  Poor little Charlotte is an orphan, and I am all the more responsible for her.’

‘There’s a chivalry in poor Tom—­’

‘Nonsense!’ said his aunt, as if resolved not to hear him out, because afraid of herself.  ’Don’t say any more about it.  I wish I had never allowed of his bringing your messages.’

‘Who set him down in the kitchen to drink a cup of beer?’ said Louis, mischievously.

’Ah! well! one comfort is, that girls never care for boys of the same age,’ replied Aunt Catharine, as she turned the key, and admitted them into No. 7; when Fitzjocelyn confused Mary’s judgment with his recommendations, till Aunt Catharine pointing out the broken shutter, and asking if he would not have been better employed in fetching the carpenter, than in hectoring the magistrates, he promised to make up for it, fetched a piece of wood and James’s tools, and was quickly at work, his Aunt only warning him, that if he lost Jem’s tools she would not say it was her fault.

By the time Mary’s imagination had portrayed what paper, paint, furniture, and habitation might make the house, and had discerned how to arrange a pretty little study in case of her father’s return; he had completed the repair in a workmanlike manner, and putting two fingers to his cap, asked, ‘Any other little job for me, ma’am?’

Of course, he forgot the tools, till shamed by Mary’s turning back for them, and after a merry luncheon, served up in haste by Jane, they betook themselves to Number 8, where the Miss Faithfulls were seated at a dessert of hard biscuits and water, of neither of which they ever partook:  they only adhered to the hereditary institution of sitting for twenty minutes after dinner with their red and purple doileys before them.

Mary seemed to herself carried back fourteen years, and to understand why her childish fancy had always believed Christiana’s Mercy a living character, when she found herself in the calm, happy little household.  The chief change was that she must now bend down, instead of reaching up, to receive the kind embraces.  Even the garments seemed unchanged, the dark merino gowns, black silk aprons, white cap-ribbons, the soft little Indian shawl worn by the elder sister, the ribbon bow by the younger, distinctions that used to puzzle her infant speculation, not aware that the coloured bow was Miss Mercy’s ensign of youth, and that its absence would have made Miss Salome feel aged indeed.  The two sisters were much alike—­but