man in my position likes his sister to go about like an
old beggar-woman? You are enough to try any one's patience, Mattie;
you are, indeed!"

"Oh, never mind me and my things," returned Mattie coaxingly; "and
don't go on writing just yet," for Archie had taken up his pen again
with a great show of being busy. "I want to tell you something that I
know will interest you. There are some new people come to the
Friary."

"What on earth do you mean?--what Friary? I am sure I never heard of
such a place."

"Dear me, Archie, how cross you are this morning!" observed Mattie, in
a cheerful voice, as she fidgeted the papers on the table. "Why, the
Friary is that shabby little cottage just above us,--not a stone's
throw from this house."

"Indeed? Well, I cannot say I am much interested in the movements of
my neighbors. I am not a gossip like you, Mattie!"--another fling at
poor Mattie. "I wish you would leave those papers alone. You know I
never allow my things to be tidied, as you call it, and I am really
very busy just now. I am in the middle of accounts, and I have to
write to Grace and----"

"Well, I thought you would like to know." And Mattie looked rather
crestfallen and disappointed. "You talked so much about those young
ladies some weeks ago, and seemed quite sorry not to see them again;
and now----" but here Archie's indifference vanished, and he looked up
eagerly.

"What young ladies? Not those in Milner's Library, who asked about the
dressmaker?"

"The very same," returned his sister, delighted at this change of
manner. "Oh, I have so much to tell you that I must sit down,"
planting herself comfortably on the arm of an easy-chair near him.
Another time Archie would have rebuked her for her unlady-like
attitude, and told her, probably, that Grace never did such things;
but now his interest was so excited that he let it pass for once. He
even suffered her to take off her old hat and deposit it unreproved on
the top of his cherished papers. "I was over at Crump's this morning,
to speak to Bobbie about weeding the garden, when I was surprised to
see a railway-van unloading furniture at the Friary."

"What an absurd name!" _sotto voce_ from Archie: but he offered no
further check to Mattie's gossip.

"I asked Mrs. Crump, as a matter of course, the name of the new
people; and she said it was Challoner. There was a mother and three
daughters, she believed. She had seen two of them,--pretty,
nice-spoken young cre