At this moment there was a knock at the door, and Bessie's tearful face appeared. Mistress Mabel had found it impossible to settle down to her usual spinning to-day, and telling the children she must look after the maids, to see they did not get gossiping about the family affairs, she had dismissed them.
"Oh, Maud, I have no brother Harry now," sobbed the little girl, throwing herself into her arms.
"But Harry is not dead," said Maud, smoothing back the tumbled hair from her hot forehead. "He has only gone away from home, and you can love him still."
"That's what Bertram says," sobbed the child; "but it isn't just the same; he was my brother before—my very own, and now"—and she burst into another passionate flood of tears.
"Prithee, now hush," said Maud. "Harry loves you all the same, I am sure, and you can love him; so that it need make no difference to you, Bessie."
"But it does make a difference," passionately exclaimed Bessie. "You said it did a little while ago."
Maud had forgotten the circumstance to which the girl referred, until she went on—"You said Harry was not your real brother, and now I am not his real sister. Has Harry got another name?" she suddenly asked.
Maud smiled, but Mary shook her head sorrowfully. "No, his name is Drury still," she said, "and he has disgraced it, Bessie—disgraced the good old name that you and I bear."
Bessie looked at Maud. "Are you glad your name is not Drury?" she said.
Maud shook her head. "I wish it was," she said, "and then I could make you understand better that I do not think Harry has disgraced it."