make _themselves_
think, by all sorts of twistings and turnings, that they have not done
so when their own hearts know they _have_. For the voice inside us is
_very_ hard to silence or deceive--I think sometimes indeed it _never_
is silenced, but that our ears grow deaf to it--that we make them so.
But this is very grave talk for you, my dear children--too grave and
difficult perhaps. I am getting so old that I suppose I sometimes forget
how very young you are! And here come your own little cups and saucers,
nicely rinsed out, and waiting to be wiped dry."

"Thank you, Grandmamma," said Duke.

"Fank you, Grandmamma," said Pamela.

And the two small pairs of hands set to work carefully at their daily
task. But they did not speak or ask Grandmamma any questions, and
somehow the old lady felt a little uneasy, for, even though they were on
the whole quiet children, this morning there was a sort of constraint
about them which she did not understand. And they, on their side, felt
glad when the "washing-up" was over and Grandmamma sent them upstairs to
their nursery, where they had lessons every morning for two hours with a
young girl whose mother had a sort of dame school in the village.

CHAPTER III.

QUEER VISITORS.

"... they are what their birth
And breeding suffer them to be--
Wild outcasts of society."
_Gypsies_--WORDSWORTH.

Miss Mitten, the young governess, had not yet come when the children got
to the nursery, though all was in order for her--the table cleared, the
three chairs set round it ready. There was nothing to do but to get out
the books and slates. Duke went to the window and stood there staring
out silently; Pamela, who always liked to be busy, dragged forward a
chair, meaning to climb on to it so as to reach up to the high shelf
where the lesson things were kept. But, as she drew out the chair,
something that had been hidden from view in a corner near which stood a
small side-table caught her eye. She let go the chair, stooping down to
examine this something, and in a moment a cry escaped her.

"Bruvver! oh, bruvver," she exclaimed, "just see! How can it have got
brokened?" and she held up the bowl--or what had been the bowl
rather--out of which Toby had gobbled up his unexpected
breakfast,--broken, hopelessly broken, into several pieces!

In an instant Duke was beside her, and together they set to work to
examine the damage, as if, alas! any examining