lose my
children. And Jack was as good a boy as need be, when he got everything
his own way. Mary, is that your only trouble? Stand where I can see you
plainly, and tell me every word the truth. Put your hair back from your
eyes now, like the catechism."

"If I were saying fifty catechisms, what more could I do than speak the
truth?" Mary asked this with some little vexation, while she stood up
proudly before her mother, and clasped her hands behind her back. "I
have told you everything I know, except one little thing, which I am not
sure about."

"What little thing, if you please? and how can you help being sure about
it, positive as you are about everything?"

"Mother, I mean that I have not been sure whether I ought to tell you;
and I meant to tell my father first, when there could be no mischief."

"Mary, I can scarcely believe my ears. To tell your father before your
mother, and not even him until nothing could be done to stop it, which
you call 'mischief!' I insist upon knowing at once what it is. I have
felt that you were hiding something. How very unlike you, how unlike a
child of mine!"

"You need not disturb yourself, mother dear. It is nothing of any
importance to me, though to other people it might be. And that is the
reason why I kept it to myself."

"Oh, we shall come to something by-and-by! One would really think you
were older than your mother. Now, miss, if you please, let us judge of
your discretion. What is it that you have been hiding so long?"

Mary's face grew crimson now, but with anger rather than with shame; she
had never thought twice about Robin Lyth with anything warmer than pity,
but this was the very way to drive her into dwelling in a mischievous
manner upon him.

"What I have been hiding," she said, most distinctly, and steadfastly
looking at her mother, "is only that I have had two talks with the great
free-trader Robin Lyth."

"That arrant smuggler! That leader of all outlaws! You have been meeting
him on the sly!"

"Certainly not. But I met him once by chance; and then, as a matter of
business, I was forced to meet him again, dear mother."

"These things are too much for me," Mrs. Anerley said, decisively. "When
matters have come to such a pass, I must beg your dear father to see to
them."

"Very well, mother; I would rather have it so. May I go now and make an
end of my gardening?"

"Certainly--as soon as you have made an end of me, as you must quite
have laid your