new a good deal, had but a faint idea of what the poor gentleman
suffered.

On the day when we saw Donald and Dorothy perched on the sofa, Mr. Reed
had been remarkably changeful, and they had been puzzled and grieved by
his manner toward Dorothy. He had been kind and irritable by turns, and
finally, for some unaccountable reason, had sharply requested her to
leave him, to "go away for mercy's sake," and then she had been recalled
on some slight pretext, and treated with extra kindness, only to be
wounded the next moment by a look from her uncle that, as she afterward
declared, "made her feel as if she had struck him."

Donald, full of sympathy for Dorry, yet refusing to blame Uncle George
without a fuller understanding of the matter, had followed his sister
into the parlor, and there they had tried in vain to solve the mystery.
For a mystery there evidently was. Dot was sure of it; and Donald,
failing to banish this "foolish notion," as he called it, from Dot's
mind, had ended by secretly sharing it, and reluctantly admitting to
himself that Uncle George, kind, good Uncle George, really had not, of
late, been very kind and good to Dorry.

"He hasn't been _ugly_," thought Donald to himself, while Dorothy sat
there, eagerly watching her brother's countenance,--"Uncle couldn't be
that. But he seems to love her one minute, and be half afraid of her the
next--no, not exactly afraid of her, but afraid of his own thoughts.
Something troubles him. I wonder what in the world it is! May be--"

"Well?" exclaimed Dorry, impatiently, at last.

"Well," repeated Don, in a different tone, "the fact is, it _is_ trying
for you, Dorry, and I can't make it out."

Meanwhile Lydia, down stairs, was working herself into what she called
"a state" on this very matter. "It isn't Christian," she thought to
herself, "though if ever a man was a true, good Christian, Mr. G. is;
but he's amazin' odd. The fact is, he doesn't know his own mind in this
business from one day to the next, and he thinks, Jack and I are stone
blind--Mercy! If here don't come those precious children!"

Surely enough, the precious children were on their way down the kitchen
stairs. They did not go into that cheerful, well-scrubbed apartment,
however, but trudged directly into the adjoining room, in which Liddy,
guarded by the faithful old dog, Nero, was now seated, peeling apples.
It had been fitted up for Lydia years before when, from a simple
housemaid, she was "prom