s your own
for a year or two?' That was till we got strong; and she's kept us
always. Of course R. Grosvenor (I'm not going to say uncle), doesn't
know that we're quite well now. I'm sure he thinks we're dead. Who does
'your own' mean but Robbie. Oh, how dull you are, Duncan! Can't you see
now why she pets that boy so, and makes such a fuss over him? He's her
own, and we're not; she loves him and doesn't love us. Did she ever beat
Robbie?"

"Robbie isn't naughty," Duncan protested; "at least, only a very little
sometimes."

Elsie uttered an impatient exclamation. "Does Robbie have to fetch milk,
and go to school, and pick up wood? No; he's treated different. Now you
know why I don't like her."

Duncan gave vent to a sigh of perplexity. There rose up in his mind a
sort of uncomfortable feeling that everything was going topsy-turvy.
Somehow or another he seemed to see Robbie's mother sitting by the side
of Elsie's bed when she had the fever last winter, and bustling about to
get nice things for her, hushing the others with a strange look in her
eyes that made them quiet at once, for they could see she was troubled.
Or he seemed to smell the grateful smell of the hot cakes waiting, crisp
and tempting, before the big cheerful fire, to greet them on their
return from afternoon school on a dreary winter day. She had been kind,
though she was so strict, especially to Elsie, and Duncan was feeling
something very much like sorrow to think that, after all, she was not
their mother.

"What are you going to do, Elsie?" he asked presently.

"I've just been wondering when you were going to ask me that. Of course
it can't stop like this. Haven't you heard granny say how rich Uncle
Grosvenor was, and what a grand place it was where he lived? Well, then,
he's a grand laird, an' if we lived with him you'd be a little laird,
and me a lady. Does he think we have to fetch milk and butter, and go
after the hens, an' all that? But I'm goin' to let him know all about
it."

"How, Elsie?"

"Well," Elsie replied, "I've been thinking of that, an' it's just a real
difficult matter; for I'd never get time to write all the long
explanation, with that _she_ always prying after me. She'd find it out,
an' stop the letter, even if I could find the paper; an' I dunno' as I
can spell all the long words it 'ud take to explain it. An' more too, I
couldn't wait an' wait for the answer. We ought to go an' see Uncle--R.
Grosvenor. I've almost made up