Nancy first and last

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"Rogues! Rogues!" cried Mr. Kirkby, when he was let into the secret. "I'll have my revenge on you yet for keeping me in the dark."

Said Pepé, "I am to be given a brother as well as a sister, it seems. Another riches. And you go to America? This pleases me. I am wishing to go. I promise Mr. Abercrombie that I follow him if I can. He will still be my good friend and has for me opportunities. I have tell him that I can decide nothing till I know the desires of my mother and sister, for where they live, I say, I also. Now we go, and I say Hola! After Spain, America, the United States."

"Oh, but not soon, you will not go soon," cried Aunt Manning, ready to combat the idea.

"By the first of the year the doctors have ordered me to be sunning myself in Spain," Terrence told her. "I am out of the running, can do no more active service, though they tell me I shall be all right in spite of the knock-out I have had. A winter in Spain, and then back to the States."

"I don't see," continued Aunt Manning, "why you and Joseph cannot go together and come back in the spring. Meanwhile Nancy and her mother can stay with me, and Nancy can be making preparations for that wedding which I suppose you are not going to put off very long. You can be married here in our little church and Mr. Kirkby will have a chance to get that revenge he was speaking of a while ago."

"Good! Good!" cried the rector.

"You'd better come with us to Spain," proposed Anita, rather confused. "You and Lillian come."

"I'm too old for that sort of thing," Aunt Manning answered, shaking her head. "Spain may be a better place than I believed. It certainly has brought me some good, and if I had to leave England to go anywhere, I'd as soon it would be there as any other place, but I'm too old to be transplanted. As for Lillian——"

"As for Lillian," spoke up that young person, "she sticks by her granny and old England, doesn't she Tommy?" She took her dog's head between her hands. "Hims has 'a stay, too, an' 'fend he mistus an' he country," she said. This remark brought from Tommy three sudden and startling barks. "He say he can't 'sert 'cause he British sojer," explained Lillian.

Aunt Manning turned to her niece. "At all events you two may as well make up your minds to stay till spring. You can be as quiet as you like, and Nancy will be wanting to take several months for her preparations."