“Lally and I are great friends,” she said, irrelevantly. “I have put her to bed every night since you went away, and sang her to sleep afterwards. She is the only person who ever encored my music. Don’t you love ‘Ritornella,’ Lally? Don’t you delight in ‘Her dark hair hung loothe?’” “Iss,” said Lally, readily. “Agnes adopted Leonard in your absence, and has been really quite affecting in her maternal solicitude about that young gentleman; but Lally and I agreed nobody could comb out her hair so well as I—nobody tell her one-half so many fairy tales. I fear we have not kept such good hours as we ought; but she looks none the worse for it, does she?” And Bessie, taking up the child, turned the little freckled face towards the light, and putting her hand under Lally’s chin, waited for the mother’s opinion on the appearance of her first-born. Heather, however, never spoke; there was something the matter with her she could not have put into words; there shot a pang through her heart such as had never disturbed it before, and involuntarily almost she stretched out her arms towards her little girl, who struggled into her mother’s embrace in spite of Bessie’s teasing efforts to detain her. “Well, Miss Lally, you’ll see whether I will shake down cherries for you to-morrow! If any one had told me, I would not have believed you could have deserted poor Bessie. You promised to be true to me for life. You are a deceitful little monkey, and I won’t love you a bit.” In answer to which Lally rejoicingly first slapped Bessie’s cheeks, and then pulled her hair, and finally offered her mouth, so full of sweetmeats that she experienced a difficulty in closing it, to the end that they might kiss and be friends. “No, I won’t kiss you, indeed,” said Bessie. “I won’t kiss an uncertain little puss who is everybody’s Joe.” Whereupon Lally declared in a voice choked with sentiment and sugar-plums, “Se isn’t bodies Joes.” All this time Heather kept silence, holding the child tight as she could to her heart. The sun had set, and as their faces were turned from the west, it seemed to her that they were walking out of the light into darkness. She never said to the child, “Don’t you love me, are you not mamma’s pet?” for she could not, at the moment, have borne to draw a comparison between Lally’s attachment for Bessie and Lally’s attachment for herself. If Heather had a sin, it was inordinate affection for that child; if it can ever be criminal for a mother to love her first-born too much, then Heather was a grievous wrong-doer. She loved her son, but she loved Lally more; loved the absurd little girl who, though christened Lily, had grown up as unlike one as can possibly be imagined; so unlike that, not to offend the unities, it had been unanimously decided, in family conclave, that Lily should be changed to Lally.