"Oh, no! it was her papa's fault for letting her come into the cold air without being well wrapped up. She had a shawl to put on, and a cloak besides, of mine; but her papa gave them to somebody else." "How dreadfully unkind! Is it her papa who did such a thing?" "Her own father. But look, Master Auchester, there is Mr. Davy beckoning to you. And I must go,--my nurse is waiting for me." "So is mine, downstairs. Have you a nurse too?" "I call her so; she came from Germany to find me, and now I take care of her." I was very anxious to see how Davy would address his adopted child, who numbered half his years, and I still detained her, hoping that he would join us. I was not mistaken; for Davy, smiling to himself at my obstinate disregard of his salute, stepped up through the intervening forms. "So you would not come down, Charles! I wanted to ask you to come early, as I wish to try your voice with Miss Benette's. Come at least by five o'clock." He looked at Clara, and I looked at her. Without a smile upon her sweet face (but in the plenitude of that infantine gravity which so enchanted the _not_ youngest part of myself), she bowed to him and answered, "If you please, sir. Then I am not to come in the morning?" "Oh, yes, in the morning also, if you can spare time. You know why I wish to hear you sing together?" "Yes, sir,--you told me. Good night, Master Auchester, and, sir, to you." And she ran out, having replaced her black bonnet and long veil. Davy spoke a few words of gratified commendation in reference to our universal progress, and then, as the room was nearly empty, brought me downstairs. I asked him about Laura. "Oh! she is not dangerously ill." "But I suppose she may be suffering," I added, in a sharp tone, for which I had been reproved times without number at home. "Why, as to that, we must all instruct ourselves to suffer. I am very sorry for my little pupil. She has had an attack of inflammation, but is only now kept still by weakness, Miss Benette tells me." "Miss Benette is very good to her, I think." "Miss Benette is very good to everybody," said Davy, earnestly, with a strange, bright meaning in his accent I looked up at him, but it was too dark to see his expressive face, for now we were in the street. "She is good to me, but could hardly be so to you, sir. She says you have done everything for her, and do still." "I try to do my duty by her; but I owe to her more than I can ever repay." How curious, to be sure! I thought, but I did not say so, there was a preventive hush in his tone and manner. "I should so like to know what we shall sing to-morrow." "So you shall, _to-morrow_; but to-night I scarcely know myself. I will come in with you, that I may obtain your mother's permission to run away with you again,--but not to another festival just yet; I could almost say, 'Would that it were!'" "I could quite, sir." "But we must make a musical feast ourselves, you and I." "Oh, sir! pray let me be a side-dish."