muttered Maud, too angry for grammar.
"Jack's always the favourite; I never do any thing right."

"Yes, you do--now and then, by accident," responded Joan, who was
sitting at the foot of our bed; a speech which did not better Maud's
temper, and it was never angelic.

Jack seemed to have forgotten his passage-at-arms with Maud. He was
always good-tempered enough, though he did tease outrageously.

"Why am I poor, Dame?" quoth Jack.

"Little Jack, thou must shortly go into the wars, and thou hast no
armour."

"But you'll get me a suit. Dame?"

"I cannot, Jack. Not for these wars. Neither can I give thee the
wealth to make thee rich, as I fain would."

"Then, Dame, you will petition the King for a grant, will you not?"
saith Meg.

"True, my daughter," saith our mother softly. "I must needs petition
the King, both for the riches from His treasury, and for the arms from
His armoury." And then she bent down to kiss Jack. "O my boy, lay not
up treasure for thyself, and thus fail to be rich in God."

I began then to see what she meant; but I rather wondered why she said
it. Such talk as that, it seemed to me, was only fit for Sunday. And
then I remembered that she was going away for a long, long time, and
that therefore Sunday talk might be appropriate.

I do not recollect any thing she said to the others, only to Jack and
me. Jack and I were always fellows. We children had paired ourselves
off, not altogether according to age, but rather according to tastes.
Edmund and Meg should have gone together, and then Hodge and Joan, and
so forth: whereas it was always Nym and Joan, and Meg and Hodge. Then
Geoffrey and Isabel made the right pair, and Kate, Jack, and I, went in
a trio. Maud was by herself; she paired with nobody, and nobody wanted
her, she was so cross. Blanche was every body's pet while she was the
baby, and Beatrice came last of all.

Our mother went round, and kissed and blessed us all. I lay inside with
Kate and Maud, and when she said, "Now, my little Agnes,"--I crept out
and travelled over the tawny silk coverlet, to those gentle velvet arms,
and she took me on her lap, and lapped me up in a fur mantle that Meg
bare on her arm.

"And what shall I say to my little Agnes?"

"Mother, say you love me!"

It came out before I knew it, and when I had said it, I was so
frightened that I hid my face in the fur. It did not encourage me to
hear Dame Hilda's exclamation--

"Lack-a-day! what