“You are a rare one for children, Lyddy; I never saw a woman to beat you. She is always begging me to ask Dan,” she went on, turning to us. “She spoils Dan hugely, and so does Molly; they are both of them soft-hearted, though you would not believe it to look at them, but many a soft fruit has a rough rind,” finished Mrs. Cornish.
Reggie was asleep all the way home, but Joyce prattled incessantly. I took them into the house as quietly as I could, after bidding Mr. Hawtry good-night. I thought it best to leave Gay to explain things to Mrs. Markham.
But all that evening, until I slept, a sentence of Mr. Hawtry’s haunted me. “I wish my sister Agnes could have known you, Miss Fenton.” Why did he wish that? And yet, and yet I should have been glad to have known Agnes Hawtry, too.
(To be continued.)
VARIETIES.
A Good Offer.
“I will save you a thousand pounds,” said an Irishman to an old gentleman, “if you don’t stand in your own light.”
“How?”
“You have a daughter, and you intend to give her ten thousand as a marriage portion.”
“I do.”