’Good night, Martha.  My love to them both, and say I’ll be there tomorrow exactly at half-past nine.  You’d better take it.  It won’t turn to slate-stone.  It hasn’t come from the old gentleman.’

‘I don’t want anything of that kind, Mr Hugh indeed I don’t.’

’Nonsense.  If you don’t take it you’ll offend me.  I believe you think I’m not much better than a schoolboy still.’

‘I don’t think you’re half so good, Mr Hugh,’ said the old servant, sticking the sovereign which Hugh had given her in under her glove as she spoke.

On the next morning that other visit was made at the brick house, and Miss Stanbury was again in a fuss.  On this occasion, however, she was in a much better humour than before, and was full of little jokes as to the nature of the visitation.  Of course, she was not to see her nephew herself, and no message was to be delivered from her, and none was to be given to her from him.  But an accurate report was to be made to her as to his appearance, and Dorothy was to be enabled to answer a variety of questions respecting him after he was gone.  ’Of course, I don’t want to know anything about his money,’ Miss Stanbury said, ’only I should like to know how much these people can afford to pay for their penny trash.’  On this occasion she had left the room and gone up-stairs before the knock came at the door, but she managed, by peeping over the balcony, to catch a glimpse of the ‘flipperty-flopperty’ hat which her nephew certainly had with him on this occasion.

Hugh Stanbury had great news for his sister.  The cottage in which Mrs Stanbury lived at Nuncombe Putney, was the tiniest little dwelling in which a lady and her two daughters ever sheltered themselves.  There was, indeed, a sitting-room, two bed-rooms, and a kitchen; but they were all so diminutive in size that the cottage was little more than a cabin.  But there was a house in the village, not large indeed, but eminently respectable, three stories high, covered with ivy, having a garden behind it, and generally called the Clock House, because there had once been a clock upon it.  This house had been lately vacated, and Hugh informed his sister that he was thinking of taking it for his mother’s accommodation.  Now, the late occupants of the Clock House, at Nuncombe Putney, had been people with five or six hundred a-year.  Had other matters been in accordance, the house would almost have entitled them to consider themselves as county people.  A gardener had always been kept there and a cow!

‘The Clock House for mamma!’

’Well, yes.  Don’t say a word about it as yet to Aunt Stanbury, as she’ll think that I’ve sold myself altogether to the old gentleman.’

‘But, Hugh, how can mamma live there?’

’The fact is, Dorothy, there is a secret.  I can’t tell you quite yet.  Of course, you’ll know it, and everybody will know it, if the thing comes about.  But as you won’t talk, I will tell you what most concerns ourselves.’