To sober, downright, matter-of-fact Keith his sister was often a sore puzzle. Her eager, impetuous, excitable disposition, and many impulsive acts, were as foreign to him as an unknown language. "Why need you work yourself up so tremendously over every trifle? What's the use of taking life so stormily?" he once remonstrated. "I don't know," replied Aldred. "I seem to care so much more about everything than you do. I can't help it; I suppose it was born in me." "Then it's high time you got it out of you!" remarked Keith, whose ideal was a state of unruffled calm on all occasions. In spite of the difference in their temperaments the two were really attached to each other, and though Keith might not be demonstrative, he tolerated Aldred's devotion when they were strictly alone, though he would not allow her, as he expressed it, to "make an exhibition of him before other fellows". Poor Aldred! She had a very warm and loving heart, and a perpetual hunger for affection that, so far, had failed to be entirely satisfied. Since the day, seven years before, when her mother had started on that long journey from which none return, nobody had seemed to understand her quite, or to know how to manage her aright. Her father, a clever barrister who went daily from Dingfield into London, was too absorbed in his profession to give much time or sympathy to his children. Having sent his son to school, and provided a daily governess for his daughter, he felt that he had done all that was required of him. The masters at Stavebury were responsible for Keith, and as for Aldred, if anything more was needful for her upbringing than Miss Perkins could give, surely his sister, who managed his house so admirably, could look after his motherless girl? Unfortunately, though Aunt Bertha had great experience and excellent skill in the making of jams and the care of linen, she had no aptitude for the handling of human souls. She was a stout, bustling, unimaginative, prosaic person, without an atom of romance or sentiment in her composition. A nature such as Aldred's was beyond her comprehension. She tried to do her best for the child, but it was such an unsympathetic best that it had the unhappy effect of setting a barrier between herself and her niece which neither seemed able to pass. Long and lucidly would Aunt Bertha reason and expound, and enjoin habits of neatness, order, and punctuality. All to no purpose! Arguments never appealed to Aldred. She would listen with an air of don't-care indifference, and do just the same next time. Yet if her aunt could have given her one warm kiss, the battle would have been won. It was a sad pity, for the girl had in reality a very sweet disposition, though at present it was like a neglected garden, where a few choice blossoms might be found, struggling with ugly weeds that threatened sometimes almost to strangle the flowers.