e to do with her, for all that,' said the boy.

'Don't you, Charley?'

The boy looked doggedly at the river. They were at Millbank, and
the river rolled on their left. His sister gently touched him on the
shoulder, and pointed to it.

'Any compensation--restitution--never mind the word, you know my
meaning. Father's grave.'

But he did not respond with any tenderness. After a moody silence he
broke out in an ill-used tone:

'It'll be a very hard thing, Liz, if, when I am trying my best to get up
in the world, you pull me back.'

'I, Charley?'

'Yes, you, Liz. Why can't you let bygones be bygones? Why can't you, as
Mr Headstone said to me this very evening about another matter, leave
well alone? What we have got to do, is, to turn our faces full in our
new direction, and keep straight on.'

'And never look back? Not even to try to make some amends?'

'You are such a dreamer,' said the boy, with his former petulance. 'It
was all very well when we sat before the fire--when we looked into the
hollow down by the flare--but we are looking into the real world, now.'

'Ah, we were looking into the real world then, Charley!'

'I understand what you mean by that, but you are not justified in it. I
don't want, as I raise myself to shake you off, Liz. I want to carry you
up with me. That's what I want to do, and mean to do. I know what I owe
you. I said to Mr Headstone this very evening, "After all, my sister got
me here." Well, then. Don't pull me back, and hold me down. That's all I
ask, and surely that's not unconscionable.'

She had kept a steadfast look upon him, and she answered with composure:

'I am not here selfishly, Charley. To please myself I could not be too
far from that river.'

'Nor could you be too far from it to please me. Let us get quit of it
equally. Why should you linger about it any more than I? I give it a
wide berth.'

'I can't get away from it, I think,' said Lizzie, passing her hand
across her forehead. 'It's no purpose of mine that I live by it still.'

'There you go, Liz! Dreaming again! You lodge yourself of your own
accord in a house with a drunken--tailor, I suppose--or something of the
sort, and a little crooked antic of a child, or old person, or whatever
it is, and then you talk as if you were drawn or driven there. Now, do
be more practical.'

She had been practical enough with him, in suffering and striving
for him; but she only laid her hand upon his shoulder--not
reproach