y, you'll come too, won't you?" he cried eagerly.

"No, Dexter; not this time."

The boy's forehead grew wrinkled all over.

"Come, you are pretending that you do not want to go."

"I don't," said the boy, hanging his head. "I want to stay here along
with you."

"Perhaps I should like you to stay, Dexter," said Helen; "but I wish you
to go and behave nicely, and you can tell me all about it when you come
back."

"And how soon may I come back?"

"I don't suppose till the evening, but we shall see. Now, go and change
those things directly. What would papa say if he saw you?"

Dexter went slowly up to his room, and came down soon after to look for
Helen.

He found her busy writing letters, so he went off on tiptoe to the
study, where the doctor was deep in his book, writing with a very severe
frown on his brow.

"Ah, Dexter," he said, looking up and running his eye critically over
the boy, the result being very satisfactory. "Let's see, you are to be
at Sir James's by half-past twelve. Now only ten. Go and amuse
yourself in the garden, and don't get into mischief."

Dexter went back into the hall, obtained his cap, and went out through
the glass door into the verandah, where the great wisteria hung a
valance of lavender blossoms all along the edge.

"He always says don't get into mischief," thought the boy. "I don't
want to get into mischief, I'm sure."

Half-way across the lawn he was startled by the sudden appearance of
Dan'l, who started out upon him from behind a great evergreen shrub.

"What are you a-doing of now?" snarled Dan'l.

"I wasn't doing anything," said Dexter, staring.

"Then you were going to do something," cried the old man sharply. "Look
here, young man; if you get meddling with anything in my garden there's
going to be trouble, so mind that. I know what boys is, so none of your
nonsense here."

He went off grumbling to another part of the garden, and Dexter felt
disposed to go back indoors.

"He's watching me all the time," he thought to himself; "just as if I
was going to steal something. He don't like me."

Dexter strolled on, and heard directly a regular rustling noise, which
he recognised at once as the sound made by a broom sweeping grass, and
sure enough, just inside the great laurel hedge, where a little green
lawn was cut off from the rest of the garden, there was Peter Cribb, at
his usual pursuit, sweeping all the sweet-scented cuttings of the grass.

Peter w