a little--firstly, as to whether she ought to accept such a favour from a friend who was not a relation, as she said; and secondly, as to whether in the midst of the trees it might be damp. But in a very short time both these fears were put to flight, and no children were ever more happy over the fitting up of a doll’s house than those two little ladies were over their furnishing. And, again, to the wonder of her sensible friends, so was Diana too. Is not a grown-up sister, a young mother, sometimes excited about the doll’s house as well as its lawful possessor? Miss Trelawny bought little bits of furniture, sought out scraps of china, had little brackets fitted in the little corners, and stands of flowers set out in the tiny hall. It was a toy mansion for her pets, upon which she expended more trouble than on her own stately dwelling-place; though what she could see in those two silly little women! as Mrs. Hunstanton constantly said. The Hunstantons were of a totally different class. They were landed gentry as good as the Trelawnys themselves, if not quite so rich. They had a house in a great grove of trees which, except in the heat of summer, was not very cheerful, and which was supposed not to be wholesome for the delicate boy who was their eldest hope and the heir. He was a pale melancholy individual, like neither father nor mother, and it was on his account that they constantly spent their winters abroad. Mr. Hunstanton was an unsteady man with nerves, who had attacks of neuralgia and notions, and was fond of meddling, people said, with things that did not concern him much. He was thin to the utmost possible of thinness, running about in jerks and thinking in jumps, a hasty man, not wise but yet lovable, and ready to undertake anything for anybody. His wife was as unlike him in person as in character. She was sensible, cool, and indisposed to “mix herself up” with other people’s affairs--still handsome though nearly fifty, calm in disposition, and somewhat disposed to criticism, for which she had ample ground in her husband’s doings and sayings. They had married late, and had some children still in the nursery, and the weakly boy of sixteen already mentioned, whom it was the chief object of their lives to tide over the difficult period of youth. For him they were always ready to move at a moment’s notice, to fly from the east winds or from the damp, or from the too great heats of summer. Climate was one of the few things which both of them believed in, and their house was full of books on the subject, and every new place was eagerly caught at and inquired about. All along the Riviera they had wandered, over Italy with all its islands, into Spain, to Gibraltar, to Algiers, up the Nile--almost as many places as there had been winters in the delicate boy’s life. Curiosities from all of these spots which possessed any curiosities filled their rooms, and the acquaintances which an active-minded man like Mr.