"But please don't ask me, mamma," said the child, in his little clear,
new voice.

"I must ask you when I want you. Come to me, my darling." And Mrs.
Ambient, who had seated herself again, held out her long, slender hands.

Her husband stopped, with his back turned to her, but without releasing
the child. He was still talking to the vicaress, but this good lady, I
think, had lost the thread of her attention. She looked at Mrs. Ambient
and at Dolcino, and then she looked at me, smiling very hard, in an
extremely fixed, cheerful manner.

"Papa," said the child, "mamma wants me not to go with you."

"He's very tired--he has run about all day. He ought to be quiet till
he goes to bed. Otherwise he won't sleep." These declarations fell
successively and gravely from Mrs. Ambient's lips.

Her husband, still without turning round, bent over the boy and looked
at him in silence. The vicaress gave a genial, irrelevant laugh, and
observed that he was a precious little pet "Let him choose," said Mark
Ambient. "My dear little boy, will you go with me or will you stay with
your mother?"

"Oh, it's a shame!" cried the vicar's lady, with increased hilarity.

"Papa, I don't think I can choose," the child answered, making his voice
very low and confidential. "But I have been a great deal with mamma
to-day," he added in a moment.

"And very little with papa! My dear fellow, I think you have chosen!"
And Mark Ambient walked off with his son, accompanied by re-echoing but
inarticulate comments from my fellow-visitor.

His wife had seated herself again, and her fixed eyes, bent upon the
ground, expressed for a few moments so much mute agitation that I felt
as if almost any remark from my own lips would be a false note. But Mrs.
Ambient quickly recovered herself, and said to me civilly enough
that she hoped I did n't mind having had to walk from the station. I
reassured her on this point, and she went on, "We have got a thing that
might have gone for you, but my husband wouldn't order it."

"That gave me the pleasure of a walk with him," I rejoined.

She was silent a minute, and then she said, "I believe the Americans
walk very little."

"Yes, we always run," I answered laughingly.

She looked at me seriously, and I began to perceive a certain coldness
in her pretty eyes. "I suppose your distances are so great?"

"Yes; but we break our marches I I can't tell you what a pleasure it is
for me to find myself here," I added. "I