etty had taken the lost treasure to Mrs. Miles to keep. She whispered
her thought to Hester, who seized it with sudden rapture.

"We can, at least, confide in Mrs. Miles," said Hetty; "and we can tell
the dogs. Perhaps the dogs could scent it out; dogs are such wonders."

"We will go straight to Mrs. Miles," said Sylvia.

Betty had told them with great glee--ah, how merry Betty was in those
days!--how she had first reached the farm, of her delightful time with
Dan and Beersheba, of her dinner, of her drive back. Had not they
themselves also visited Stoke Farm? What a delightful, what a glorious,
time they had had there! That indeed was a time of joy. Now was a time
of fearful trouble. But they felt, poor little things! though they could
not possibly confide either in kind Martha West or in any of their
school-friends, that they might confide in Mrs. Miles.

Accordingly they managed to vault over the iron railings, get on to the
roadside, and in course of time to reach Stoke Farm. The dogs rushed out
to meet them. But Dan and Beersheba were sagacious beasts. They hated
frivolity, they hated unfeeling people, but they respected great sorrow;
and when Hetty said with a burst of tears, "Oh, Dan, Dan, darling Dan,
Betty, your Betty and ours, is so dreadfully ill!" Dan fawned upon the
little girl, licked her hands, and looked into her face with all the
pathos in the world in his brown doggy eyes. Beersheba, of course,
followed his brother's example. So the poor little twins, accompanied by
the dogs, entered Mrs. Miles's kitchen.

Mrs. Miles sprang up with a cry of rapture and surprise at the sight of
them. "Why, my dears! my dears!" she said. "And wherever is the elder of
you? Where do she be? Oh, then it's me is right glad to see you both!"

"We want to talk to you, Mrs. Miles," said Sylvia.

"And we want to kiss you, Mrs. Miles," said Hester.

Then they flung themselves upon her and burst into floods of most bitter
weeping.

Mrs. Miles had not brought up a large family of children for nothing.
She was accustomed to childish griefs. She knew how violent, how
tempestuous, such griefs might be, and yet how quickly the storms would
pass, the sunshine come, and how smiles would replace tears. She treated
the twins, therefore, now, just as though they were her own children.
She allowed them to cry on her breast, and murmured, "Dear, dear! Poor
lambs! poor lambs! Now, this is dreadful bad, to be sure! But don't you
mind h