“No,” I answered, turning almost sick at the idea of having been away from church for so many Sundays while she was giving voice and expression to the dear asthmatic old pipes. And I did feel very ready to murmur, like a spoilt child that had not had his way. Think of HER there, and me here! “Then,” I said to myself at last, “it must have been she that played I know that my Redeemer liveth, that last time I was in church! And instead of thanking God for that, here I am murmuring that He did not give me more! And this child has just been telling me that I have taught her to try not to be selfish. Certainly I should be ashamed of myself.” “When was your uncle taken ill?” “I don’t exactly remember. But you will come and see him to-morrow? And then we shall see you too. For we are always out and in of his room just now.” “I will come if Dr Duncan will let me. Perhaps he will take me in his carriage.” “No, no. Don’t you come with him. Uncle can’t bear doctors. He never was ill in his life before, and he behaves to Dr Duncan just as if he had made him ill. I wish I could send the carriage for you. But I can’t, you know.” “Never mind, Judy. I shall manage somehow.—What is the name of the gentleman who was staying with you?” “Don’t you know? Captain George Everard. He would change his name to Oldcastle, you know.” What a foolish pain, like a spear-thrust, they sent through me—those words spoken in such a taken-for-granted way! “He’s a relation—on grannie’s side mostly, I believe. But I never could understand the explanation. What makes it harder is, that all the husbands and wives in our family, for a hundred and fifty years, have been more or less of cousins, or half-cousins, or second or third cousins. Captain Everard has what grandmamma calls a neat little property of his own from his mother, somewhere in Northumberland; for he IS only a third son, one of a class grannie does not in general feel very friendly to, I assure you, Mr Walton. But his second brother is dead, and the eldest something the worse for the wear, as grannie says; so that the captain comes just within sight of the coronet of an old uncle who ought to have been dead long ago. Just the match for auntie!” “But you say auntie doesn’t like him.” “Oh! but you know that doesn’t matter,” returned Judy, with bitterness. “What will grannie care for that? It’s nothing to anybody but auntie, and she must get used to it. Nobody makes anything of her.”