ng hard to keep her
tears back when the bread was dry and scanty and she was very hungry.

She was very happy with Neil at her side, and she laughed and chatted
with him and told him of Stoneleigh and the white rabbit old Anthony was
rearing for him when he came at Christmas as he had promised to do.

Dinner being over, Archie, who did not smoke, excused himself from the
gentlemen who did, and taking Bessie with him, sauntered off into the
grounds till he reached the seat where he had found his uncle. Sitting
down upon it and taking Bessie in his lap he told her of his good
fortune and showed her the bank-note.

"Oh, I am so glad!" the child exclaimed; "for now we are real, and not
impostors, are we?"

"Not in the sense of not having any money," he replied, but there was a
sad, anxious expression on his face, as he looked down upon the little
girl beside him, and thought of the future and what it might bring to
her.

"Bessie," he said, at last, "how would you like to live at Stoneleigh
altogether, and not be traveling about?"

"Oh, I'd like it so much," Bessie said, "but I am afraid mamma would
not. She hates Stoneleigh, it's so dull."

"But you and I might live there. You would be my little housekeeper and
I could teach you your lessons," Archie said, conjuring up in his mind a
vision of a quiet home with Bessie as his companion.

If Daisy did not choose to stay with him she could go and come as she
liked, he thought, and then and there he decided that _his_ wandering
life was at an end.

The next day the party at Penrhyn Park was increased by Mr. and Mrs.
Burton Jerrold from Boston: "very nice Americans, especially the lady,
who might pass for an Englishwoman," Mrs. Smithers informed her guests.

"Yes, I know them, or rather I know their son Grey, the young cub who
thrashed me so last Fourth of July when we were at Melrose," Neil
exclaimed; "but he's not a bad fellow after all, and we grew to be good
friends, I hope he is coming, too."

But Grey did not come, as the reader will remember, for his mother made
it a kind of punishment for his quarrel with Neil, that he should remain
in London while she visited at Penrhyn Park, where she met with Lady
Jane McPherson, whom she admired greatly, and with Daisy, whom she
detested for the bold coquetry, which manifested itself so plainly after
the arrival of Lord Hardy, that even Mrs. Smithers' sense of propriety
was shocked, and she began to look forward with plea