.--I had been taken by surprise, their journey (one of the first
across the Isthmus) had been so much quicker than I had expected, or I
should have left the house free for them.

"Why?" asked Harold. And when I answered that the place was his and I
had no business there, he did not seem to see it. "It is your home,"
he said; "you have always lived here."

I began explaining that this was no reason at all; but he would not
hear of my going away, and declared that it was I who belonged to the
place, so that I confessed that I should be very thankful to stay a
little while.

"Not only a little while," he said; "it is your home as much as ever,
and the best thing in the world for us."

"Yes, yes," responded Eustace; "we kept on wondering what Aunt Lucy
would be like, and never thought she could be such a nice _young_ lady."

"Not realising that your aunt is younger than yourselves," I said.

"No," said Eustace, "the old folk never would talk of home--my father
did not like it, you see--and Aunt Alice had moved off to New Zealand,
so that we could not go and talk about it to her. Mr. Smith has got a
school in Auckland, you know."

I did not know, but I found that a year or two after the death of my
brother Ambrose, his widow had become the second wife of the master of
a boarding-school at Sydney, and that it was there that Harold, at ten
years old, had fought all the boys, including the step-children, and
had been so audacious and uncontrollable, that she had been forced to
return him to his uncle and aunt in the "Bush." Eustace had been with
the Smiths at Sydney until her move to Auckland, he had even been
presented, and had been to a ball at Government House, and thus was
viewed as the polished member of the family, though, if he had come as
master, I should never have been drawn, as I was by Harold's free,
kindly simplicity, into writing my thanks to Lady Diana, and saying
that I could not leave my nephews so abruptly, especially as they had
brought a little sister.

It was gratifying to see that Harold was uneasy till the note was sent
off and the carriage dismissed. "You are not going?" he said, as
persuasively as if he were speaking to Dora, and I strove to make a
wise and prudent answer, about remaining for the next few days, and
settling the rest when he had made his plans.

Then I proposed to take Dora up to bed, but though manifestly very
weary, the child refused, and when her brother tried to order h