CHAPTER V.
"Look ere thou leap, see ere thou go."
"Well, Barbara, can I go?"
"I don't know"—doubtfully. There is a cloud on Mrs. Monkton's brow, she is staring out of the window instead of into her sister's face, and she is evidently a little distressed or uncertain. "You have been there so lately, and——"
"You want to say something," says the younger sister, seating herself on the sofa, and drawing Mrs. Monkton down beside her. "Why don't you do it?"
"You can't want to go so very much, can you now?" asks the latter, anxiously, almost entreatingly.
"It is I who don't know this time!" says Joyce, with a smile. "And yet——"
"It seems only like yesterday that you came back after spending a month there."