e encouragement in the world after all, and every project of mine
has not turned out like my two specimens of copper ore. You remember
them, Mary and our first encounter?'

'Remember it!' said Mary. 'I don't think I forgot a day of that
summer.'

'What I brought you here for,' said Louis, 'was to ask you to let me do
what I have long wished--to let me put the letter M here?'

'I think you might have done it without leave,' said Mary.

'So I might at first, but by the time I came here again, Mary, you had
become in my estimation 'a little more than kin,' and less than--no, I
wont say that, but one could not treat you as comfortably as Clara. I
lost a cousin one August day, and never found her again!'

'Never?'

'Never--but the odd thing is, that I cannot believe that what I did
find has been away these seven years.'

'Yes, that is very strange,' said Mary; 'I have felt it so. Wo do seem
to understand and guess each other's thoughts as if we had been going
on together all this time. I believe it is because you gave me the
first impulse to think, and taught me the way.'

'And I know who first taught me to think to any purpose,' said Louis,
smiling. 'But who is this descending on us?'

It was the Spanish gentleman, reddening all over at such an encounter,
in mid-career towards her at the Terrace, and muttering something,
breathless and almost surly, about begging pardon.

'Look here, Tom,' said Louis, lifting the leaves to show the letters.
'That is all I ever could feel on that matter, and so should you.
There, no more about it,--you want to be on your way; and tell Mr.
Frost that we shall be at Northwold in the afternoon.'

About half an hour after, Clara was delicately blowing the dust out of
the wreath of forget-me-nots on the porcelain shepherdess's hat, when a
shriek resounded through the house, and, barely saving the Arcadian in
her start, she rushed downstairs. James, in his shirt-sleeves, was
already on his way to the kitchen. There Kitty was found, too much
frightened, to run away, making lunges with the toasting-fork at a
black-bearded figure, who held in his arms Charlotte Arnold, in a fit
of the almost forgotten hysterics. The workhouse girl shrieked for the
police; Jane was at Master Oliver's door, prepared for flight or
defence; Isabel stood on the stairs, with her baby in her arms, and her
little flock clinging to her skirts, when Clara darted back, laughing
too much to speak distinctly