"Come inside, Tommy," he said. "Let us mingle our tears together. You

ungrateful young sweep, how dare you cry! She kissed you!"

Nell, of the tender heart, had grown somewhat fond of Beaumont

Buildings, and she sighed rather wistfully as she looked back at it, and

thought of the humble friends who would, she knew, miss her; but her

spirits rose as the train left the tops of the houses and carried Dick

and her into the fresh air of the great Hampshire downs.

"It seems years, ages, since I saw the country!" she exclaimed. "Dick,

do you see those sheep? They are white! Think of it! Think of the grimy

ones in the parks! Couldn't we have a Society for Washing the Poor

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London Sheep, Dick? And look at that farmhouse! Oh, Dick, it isn't

Devonshire and--and Shorne Mills, but it is the country at last!"

"All right; keep your hair on, young woman," said Dick, looking out of

the window in a patronizing fashion. "This is all very well; but wait

until you get to Anglemere. Then you can shout and carry on if you

like. Old Bardsley--nice old chap when he steps off his perch--says it

is one of the most delightful 'seats' in England; as if it were a kind

of armchair! Lucky beggar, this young lord! Nell, I've a kind of feeling

that I ought to have been the heldest son of an hearl, but that I was

changed in the cradle, don't you know. I should advise you not to stick

your head too far out of the window, or one of these tunnels will knock

it off. A brainless sister I can bear with, but one without any head at

all would be rather too much."

He was pretty jubilant himself, though, boylike, he tried to play the

cynic; and when the ramshackle fly drove through the picturesque

village, and they came in sight of a huge palace of a house which

gleamed redly through the trees of an English park, and the flyman,

pointing with his whip, informed them that it was Anglemere, Dick

emitted a whistle of surprise and admiration.

"I say, that is something like! What signifies the Maltbys' and the

other places we know, after that?"

But Nell's eyes, after a glance at the great house, were fixed upon the

lodge at which the fly had stopped.

"Oh, Dick, how pretty!" she exclaimed, her beautiful face radiant with

delight as she gazed at the ivy-covered little house with its latticed

windows and Gothic porch.




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