rching obscure corners.
In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books were
discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a
memorandum-book or diary. "This seems to be Latin," said Jessie, fishing
out a smaller book. "I can't read it."

"It's just as well you shouldn't," said Christie shortly, whose ideas
of a general classical impropriety had been gathered from pages of
Lempriere's dictionary. "Put it back directly."

Jessie returned certain odes of one Horatius Flaccus to the corner, and
uttered an exclamation. "Oh, Christie! here are some letters tied up
with a ribbon."

They were two or three prettily written letters, exhaling a faint odor
of refinement and of the pressed flowers that peeped from between the
loose leaves. "I see, 'My darling Fairfax.' It's from some woman."

"I don't think much of her, whosoever she is," said Christie, tossing
the intact packet back into the corner.

"Nor I," echoed Jessie.

Nevertheless, by some feminine inconsistency, evidently the circumstance
did make them think more of HIM, for a minute later, when they had
reentered their own room, Christie remarked, "The idea of petting a
man by his family name! Think of mamma ever having called papa 'darling
Carr'!"

"Oh, but his family name isn't Fairfax," said Jessie hastily; "that's
his FIRST name, his Christian name. I forget what's his other name, but
nobody ever calls him by it."

"Do you mean," said Christie, with glistening eyes and awful
deliberation--"do you mean to say that we're expected to fall in with
this insufferable familiarity? I suppose they'll be calling US by our
Christian names next."

"Oh, but they do!" said Jessie, mischievously.

"What!"

"They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one, asked me if
Christie played."

"And what did you say?"

"I said that you did," answered Jessie, with an affectation of cherubic
simplicity. "You do, dear; don't you? . . . There, don't get angry,
darling; I couldn't flare up all of a sudden in the face of that poor
little creature; he looked so absurd--and so--so honest."

Christie turned away, relapsing into her old resigned manner, and
assuming her household duties in a quiet, temporizing way that was,
however, without hope or expectation.

Mr. Carr, who had dined with his friends under the excuse of not adding
to the awkwardness of the first day's housekeeping returned late at
night with a mass of papers and drawings, into whic