use a pair of arms had been flung
suddenly round his neck, and two kisses imprinted passionately on his
sallow cheek. A tear also rested on his cheek, but that he wiped away.

CHAPTER II.

TRAVELING COMPANIONS.

The train moved rapidly on its way, and the girl in one corner of the
railway carriage cried silently behind her crape veil. Her tears were
very subdued, but her heart felt sore, bruised, indignant; she hated the
idea of school-life before her; she hated the expected restraints and the
probable punishments; she fancied herself going from a free life into a
prison, and detested it accordingly.

Three months before, Hester Thornton had been one of the happiest,
brightest and merriest of little girls in ----shire; but the mother who
was her guardian angel, who had kept the frank and spirited child in
check without appearing to do so, who had guided her by the magical power
of love and not in the least by that of fear, had met her death suddenly
by means of a carriage accident, and Hester and baby Nan were left
motherless. Several little brothers and sisters had come between Hester
and Nan, but from various causes they had all died in their infancy, and
only the eldest and youngest of Sir John Thornton's family remained.

Hester's father was stern, uncompromising. He was a very just and upright
man, but he knew nothing of the ways of children, and when Hester in her
usual tom-boyish fashion climbed trees and tore her dresses, and rode
bare-backed on one or two of his most dangerous horses, he not only tried
a little sharp, and therefore useless, correction, but determined to take
immediate steps to have his wild and rather unmanageable little daughter
sent to a first-class school. Hester was on her way there now, and very
sore was her heart and indignant her impulses. Father's "good-bye" seemed
to her to be the crowning touch to her unhappiness, and she made up her
mind not to be good, not to learn her lessons, not to come home at
midsummer crowned with honors and reduced to an every-day and pattern
little girl. No, she would be the same wild Hetty as of yore; and when
father saw that school could do nothing for her, that it could never make
her into a good and ordinary little girl, he would allow her to remain at
home. At home there was at least Nan to love, and there was mother to
remember.

Hetty was a child of the strongest feelings. Since her mother's death she
had scarcely mentioned her name. Whe