our 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."

"I g