ry
much confused by this sudden appeal to her opinion. Sir Harry had
already importuned for a speedy marriage, and she had in much
trepidation referred him to her mother, feeling herself unequal to the
task of answering him.

"Yes, your mother is a sensible woman," continued Sir Harry, taking no
notice of her confusion. "She knows that a great house full of
servants is more than a man can manage alone; and so, as I told her
that Gilsbank was ready, and its master waiting, she was quite of my
opinion that there should be no delay. You see, Mattie," in a tone of
great gentleness, "though I am very fond of you, I cannot help feeling
stifled in a small house full of people. There is no getting you to
myself, or being comfortable; and a man of my size feels out of place
among a lot of girls. So if you are willing, as of course you are,"
very coaxingly, "and I am willing, we may as well get the thing over.
It takes a good deal out of a fellow to go through this sort of thing
properly, and I don't fancy I hit it off well: so we will say this day
six weeks. And to-morrow you will be a good little woman, and let me
go back to my comfortable quarters at Hadleigh, for one breathes only
smoke here; and how you have always borne it all these years is a
mystery to me."

So Mattie let him go cheerfully. She had never been selfish in her
life, and of course she spoke no word to dissuade him; but, though she
had but few letters from him, and those of the briefest possible
kind,--for Sir Harry was not fond of penmanship,--those six weeks were
far from being unhappy. How could they be, when they were all so good
to her, Mattie thought?--when her opinion was deferred to even by her
mother, and when her brothers and sisters treated her with such
respect and affection?

Mattie had no sense of the ludicrous, or she would have laughed at the
change in Clyde's tone, or at the way Fred boxed Dottie's ears for
speaking rudely to Mattie: in their eyes the future Lady Challoner was
a person of the utmost importance. The boys vied with each other in
waiting on her; the girls were always ready with their little
services. Mattie felt herself almost overwhelmed sometimes.

"Oh, mother, ask them not to do it!" she said, one day, with tears in
her eyes. "I am only Mattie; I am not different; I never shall be
different. I shall want to wait on you all my life,--on you and all of
them!"

"It is for them to wait on you more!" returned her mother, gra