d fallen in love with her. Two
years she lived at Stoneleigh, happy as the singing birds which flew
about the place and built their nests in the yews, and then one summer
morning she died, and left to Dorothy's care a little boy of three
weeks, who, without much attention from any one as regarded his moral
and mental culture, had scrambled along somehow, and had reached the age
of sixteen without a single serious thought as to his future and without
ever having made the least exertion for himself. Dorothy and Anthony,
the two servants of the place, had taken care of him, and would continue
to do so even after his father's death, or, if they did not, his uncle,
the Hon. John McPherson, in London, would never see him want, he
thought; so, with no bad habits except his extreme indolence, which
amounted to absolute laziness, the boy's days passed on, until the hot
summer morning in June, when he lay asleep on a broad bench under the
shade of a yew tree, with his face upturned to the sunlight which
penetrated through the overchanging boughs and fell in patches upon him.
Occasionally a fly or honey-bee came and buzzed about him, but never
alighted upon him, because of the watchful vigilance of the young girl
who stood by his side, shielding him from the sun's rays with her person
and her while cape bonnet, which she also used to scare away the
insects, for Archie McPherson must not be troubled even in his sleep, if
care of hers could prevent it.

The girl who was not more than twelve in reality, though, her training
had made her much older in knowledge and experience, was singularly
beautiful, with great blue eyes and wavy golden hair, which fell in long
curls to her waist. Her dress, though scrupulously neat and clean, and
becoming, indicated that she belonged to the middle or working class,
far below the social position of the boy. But whatever inequality of
rank there was between them, she had never felt it, for ever since she
could remember anything, Archie McPherson had played with and petted and
teased her, and she was almost as much at home at Stoneleigh as in the
work-room of her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Allen, who made dresses for the
ladies of Bangor and vicinity.

"How handsome he is," she said to herself, as she gazed admiringly upon
the sleeping boy, "and how white and slim his hands are. A great deal
whiter than mine, but that, I suppose, is because he is a gentleman's
son, and I have to wash dishes, and sweep an