and sensible conclusion about your future. While
you are away, I will do your work for you and you shall have your full
share of whatever money is made. Stay a year if you wish, but try and
find yourself before you come home."

"I would like to do as you say, John, but a year is a long time to be
away from the girl you love. I should want her every hour and should be
utterly miserable without her."

John was silent and troubled. Harry looked entreatingly at him, and it
was hard to resist the pleading in the young man's eyes. Finally John
asked a little coldly,

"Do you want to get married?"

"Not just yet--if I can get mother to go with me."

"To the Mediterranean?"

"Certainly."

"Who is the girl?"

"Miss Lugur, the schoolmaster's daughter."

"Mother would not go. You could not expect it. I also should be much
against her spending a year away from home. Oh, you know it is out of
the question!"

"I think mother will go. I shall ask her."

"I wonder how you can find it in your heart to ask such a thing of her!"

"Lucy Lugur, poor little girl, has no mother."

"You cannot expect Mrs. Stephen Hatton to mother her."

"Yes, I do. Mother has often told me she would do anything in the world
for me. I am going to ask her to go with me, then I can take Lucy."

"Harry, you must not put her love in such a hard strait. Do be
reasonable."

"I cannot be reasonable about Lucy Lugur. I love her, John; she is the
most beautiful woman in the world."

"All right, I do not contradict you; but is that any reason for
sacrificing mother's comfort to her beauty?"

"Mother likes to give up to me. If I ask her to go, she will go. I do
not forget, John, what you have promised; no indeed, and I am sure
mother will be quite as kind. I will now go and ask her."

When he arrived at the Hall gate, he had a sudden sense of the injustice
of his intention, but the thought of Lucy Lugur put it down; and he
heralded his arrival by a long, sweet whistle, whose music penetrated
the distance and informed Mrs. Hatton of her son's approach. She was
drinking her afternoon cup of tea to angry thoughts of him, telling
herself that he ought to have been home on the previous day, that at
least he ought to have sent her a few lines when delayed. So troubled
was she by these reflections and others rising from them that she had
forgotten to put sugar in her tea, and was eating wheat bread when her
favorite thin slices of rye loaf were at her h