At that moment a servant came to the door to tell the captain that a gentleman had called on business, and was in the library waiting to see him.
"Very well; tell him I will be there presently," replied Captain Raymond. Then turning to Lulu, "You may amuse yourself as you like for an hour, then prepare your lessons for to-morrow."
"Yes, sir," she answered, as he left the room, then put on her hat and taking a parasol wandered out upon the lawn.
The captain had been giving the young people some lessons in botany, and the girls were vieing with each other as to who should gather into her herbarium the largest number of plants and flowers, particularly such as were to be found in that region, but never, or very rarely, in the more northern one they called their home. Lulu had found, and, from time to time, placed in her herbarium, several which she highly prized for both beauty and rarity, and now she went in quest of others.
She had scarcely left the house when, much to her surprise, she met her baby brother and his nurse.
"Why, Neddie dear, I thought you had gone——" but she paused, fearing to set the child to crying for his mother.
"Marse Ned's sleeping when dey goes, Miss Lu; I spec's dey'll be back fo' long," said the nurse; and catching him up in her arms she began a romping play with him, her evident object to ward off thoughts of his absent mother.
Lulu walked on, spent a half hour or more gathering flowers, then returned to the school-room, where she had left her herbarium lying on her desk. But Master Ned, there before her, had pulled it down on the floor, where he sat tearing out the plants which she had prepared and placed in it with so much labor and care.
At that trying sight, Lulu's anger flamed out as it had not in years; not since the sad time when little Elsie was so nearly sacrificed to her eldest sister's lack of self-control.
"You naughty, naughty, naughty boy!" she exclaimed, snatching the herbarium from the floor. "I'd just like to shake you well, and spank you, too. You deserve it richly, for you have no business to be here meddling with my things!"