'Oh!' said Miss Bess quickly, 'you must never say that to mamma, nurse. You don't know what a trouble it is to her not to have a boy. She'd have liked Lally to be a boy most of all. She wanted her to be a boy; she always says so.'

Here Master Francis gave a deep sigh in his turn.

'Oh! how I wish,' he said, 'that I could turn myself into a girl and Lally into a boy. I wouldn't like to be a girl at all, and I daresay Lally wouldn't like to be a boy. But to please Aunt Helen I'd do it.'

'No,' said Miss Lally, 'I don't think I would—not even to please mamma. I couldn't bear to be a boy.'

I was rather sorry I had led to this talk.

'Isn't it best,' I said, 'to take things as they are? Master Francis is just like your brother—the same name and everything.'

'I'd like it that way,' said Master Francis, with a pleased look in his eyes. But I heard Miss Bess, who was walking close beside me, say in a low voice, 'Mamma will never think of it that way!'

This talk made some things clearer to me than before, and that evening, after the children were in bed, I went down to the housekeeper's room and eased my mind by telling her about it, I felt so afraid of having said anything uncalled for. But Mrs. Brent comforted me.

'It's best for you to know,' she said, 'that my lady does make a great trouble, too great a trouble, to my thinking, of not having a son. And no doubt it has to do with her coldness to Master Francis, though I doubt if she really knows this herself, for she's a lady that means to do right and justly to all about her; I will say that for her.'

It was really something to be thankful for to have such a good and sensible woman to ask advice from, for a stranger, as I still was. The more I knew her, the more she reminded me of my good mother. Plain and homely in her ways, with no love of gossip about her, yet not afraid to speak out her mind when she saw it right to do so. Many things would have been harder at Treluan, the poor dear children would have had less pleasure in their lives, but for Mrs. Brent's kind thought for them. That very evening I had had a reason, so to say, for paying a special visit to the housekeeper's room; for when we had got in from our long walk, rather tired and certainly very hungry, a nice surprise was waiting for us in the nursery. The tea-table was already set out most carefully. There was a pile of Mrs. Brent's hot scones and a beautiful dish of strawberries.