‘I am sure, Lucy, that was more your fault than mine,’ said Harriet; ‘I could not be watching him all the time we were at that place.’

‘Then why did you take him there?’ said Helen.

’Because Lucy chose to run away without ever thinking what I was to do,’ said Harriet.

’But when you were leading him, and it must have been you who let go his string,’ said Helen; ’I cannot see how you can accuse Lucy of having been the means of losing him, when she was safe at home.’

Harriet was saved from the necessity of finding an answer, by hearing her mother calling her in the passage, and she hastened to obey the summons.

‘Do you know where Fido is?’ was Mrs. Hazleby’s question.

‘No,’ said Harriet, finding she had only escaped one dilemma to fall into another.  She avoided any further questions, however, by hastening past her mother and running up-stairs.

‘Lucy, Lucy!’ then called Mrs. Hazleby; and as Lucy came out of the school-room, she repeated the inquiry.

‘I do not know, Mamma,’ answered Lucy in a low voice, but standing quite still.

‘Go and ask for him in the kitchen then,’ said Mrs. Hazleby.

‘I am afraid it would be of no use.  Ma’am,’ said Lucy, firmly, but not daring to raise her eyes; ’we missed him when we came in from walking, yesterday evening.’

‘Yesterday evening!’ cried Mrs. Hazleby; ’and did you never speak of it?  I never knew anyone so careless as you are, in all my life.  It is of no use to leave anything in your charge, you care for—­’

Here Lucy leant back and shut the door behind her, so that Anne and Helen could distinguish nothing but the sound of Mrs. Hazleby’s loud angry voice raised to its highest pitch.

‘Poor Lucy!’ sighed Helen.

‘Dreadful!’ said Anne.

’And how can anyone say that Lucy is not one of the noblest, most self-devoted creatures upon earth?’ exclaimed Helen, with tears in her eyes; ’there she is, bearing all that terrible scolding, rather than say it was Harriet’s fault, as everyone knows it was.  I am sure no one is like Lucy.  And this is going on continually about something or other.’

‘How can she exist?’ said Anne.

‘With her acute feelings and painful timidity,’ said Helen, ’it is worse for her than it would be for anyone else, yet how gently and simply she bears it all! and old Mrs. Hazleby says that she is often ill after these scoldings, and she would have taken her away to live with her, as the Major proposed, after Miss Dorothea Hazleby died, but that she thought it would be taking away all the comfort of her father’s life.  Oh!  Anne,’ cried Helen, walking up and down the room as Mrs. Hazleby’s voice became louder and louder, ’I cannot bear it; what shall I do?  Oh! if it was but right, if it would not make it worse for Lucy, I could, I would go out and tell Mrs. Hazleby what everybody thinks of her.’