e
for months:

"'Thy elder brother I would be,
Thy _father_, _anything_ to thee!'"

"By-the-by, Dicky, where is your father now?" asks Stephen Gower, who is
leaning against the mantelpiece in Dulce's vicinity, but not quite close
to her. Ill-temper, called dignity, forbids his nearer approach to his
goddess.

"Down South," says Dicky. "_Not_ in Carolina, exactly, but in Devon. It
_does_ remind one of the ten little nigger boys, doesn't it?" Then he
begins with a quite uncalled for amount of energy, "'Eight little nigger
boys traveling in Devon, one overslept hisself, and then there were
seven,'" and would probably have continued the dismal ditty up to the
bitter end, but that Sir Mark calls him up sharp.

"Never mind the niggers," he says, "tell us about your father. Where is
he now?"

"Down at the old place, cursing his fate, no doubt. By-the-bye, talking
of my ancestral home, I wish some day you would all come and put in a
month there. Will you?"

"We will," says Julia, directly. Julia is always ready to go anywhere,
children and all, at a moment's notice.

"Is it a nice place, Dicky?" asks Sir Mark, cautiously.

"No, it isn't," says Mr. Browne; "not _now_, you know. I hear it used to
be; but there's no believing old people, they lie like fun. I'll get it
settled up for all of you, if you'll promise to come, but just at
present it isn't much. It is an odd old place, all doors and dust, and
rats, I shouldn't wonder."

"That's nothing," says Gower. "Anything else against it?"

"Well, I don't know," replies Dicky, gloomily. "It _smells_, I think."

"Smells! good gracious, of what?" asks Julia.

"_Bones!_" says Mr. Browne, mysteriously. "_Dead_ bones!"

"What sort of bones?" asks Portia, starting into life, and really
growing a little pale, even beneath the crimson glare of the pine logs.

"Human bones!" says Dicky, growing more gloomy as he says this, and
marks with rapture the impression it makes upon his audience. "It
reminds one of graves, and sarcophaguses, and cemeteries, and horrid
things that rustle in coffin cloths, and mop and mow in corners. But if
you will come, I will make you all heartily welcome."

"Thank you. No, I don't think _I'll_ come," says Julia, casting an
uneasy glance behind her; the recesses of the room are but dimly lit,
and appear ghostlike, highly suggestive of things uncanny from where she
sits. "Dicky," pathetically, not to say affrightedly, "you have