ess it was kindness. Most likely."

"Kindness!" echoed Mrs. Copley. "Poor kindness, I call it, to take a
man, or a boy, or any one else, away from his natural home. Haven't you
found it so? Don't you wish you were back there again?"

"Well," said Rupert with a little slowness, and a twinkle in his eye at
the same time,--"I just don't; if I'm to tell the truth."

"It is incomprehensible to me!" returned the lady. "Why, what do you
find here, that you would not have had at home?"

"England, for one thing," said the young man with a smile.

"England! Of course you would not have had England at home; but isn't
America better?"

"I think it is."

"Then what do you gain by exchanging one for the other?" said Mrs.
Copley with heat.

"That exchange ain't made yet. I calculate to go back, when I have got
all I want on this side."

"And what do you want? Money, I suppose. Everything is for money, with
everybody. Country, and family, and the ease of life, and the pleasure
of being together--nothing matters, if only one may get money! I don't
know but savages have the best of it. At least they don't live for
money."

Mrs. Copley forgot at the moment that she was wishing her daughter to
marry for money.

"I counsel you, young man," she began again. "Money won't buy
everything."

He laughed good-humouredly. "Can't buy much without it," he said, with
that shrewd twinkle in his eye.

"And what can Mr. Copley do for you, I should like to know?" she went
on impatiently.

"He's put me in a likely way," said Rupert. "I am very much beholden to
Mr. Copley. But the best thing he has done for me is this--by a long
jump."

"_This?_ What?"

"Letting me go along this journey. I do _not_ think money is the very
best of all things," the young man said with some spirit.

"Letting you---- Do you mean that you are going to Venice in our party?"

"If it is Venice you are going to."

Silence fell. Mrs. Copley pondered the news in some consternation. To
Dolly it was not news, and she did not mean it should be fact, if she
could help it.

"Perhaps you have business in Venice?" Mrs. Copley at length ventured.

"I hope it'll turn out so," said Rupert. "Mr. Copley said I might have
the pleasure of taking care of you. I should enjoy that, I guess, more
than making money."

"Good gracious!" was all the speech Mrs. Copley was capable of. She sat
and looked at the young man. So, furtively, did Dolly. He was enjoying
his supper; ye