“If it is his right, he shall have it,” said Lady Markham, with a quiver in her voice. “Mr. Scrivener tells me we must resist no longer--and he is your brother, as he says, and we have no right to reject his kindness. Do you know, children,” she cried, suddenly clasping her hands together with an impatient movement, “while we are talking so much at our ease, it is not our own house we are in, but this gentleman’s house? He can turn us out of it whenever he pleases, while we are arguing whether we will let him come into it! Sir,” she said, rising up once more (but she had done it once; she could not again give him the title, which ought to have been Paul’s)--“Sir, I acknowledge that you are kind, generous--far more than we have any right to expect--but you will understand that such a position is not easy--that it is very strange to me--and very new, and----” “Certainly, ma’am,” said Gus. Her politeness (as he called it to himself) put him on his mettle. “All you say is very true and just. If I were a little monster, as Alice thinks, there are a great many things I could do to make myself disagreeable; and if you were not a sensible woman, as I always felt you to be, we might make a very pretty mess between us. But as we are not fiends, but good Christians (I hope), suppose you let the little ones come down with me to the village to see after my things? It’s a nice afternoon, though a little dull. You ladies ought to go out too and take the air. My little dears,” he said, “we’ll have those big cases up; there are a lot of things in them I brought from Barbadoes expressly for you. And those sweetmeats--I told you of them the first time I came into this house.” “You said they were for me,” said Marie, with a tone of reproach; “but that cannot have been true, for you did not know of me.” Gus had put one hand in Bell’s arm and the other on Marie’s shoulder. He looked at his two little companions with the sincerest pleasure in his little brown face. “I did not know you were Marie, nor that this was Bell: but I knew that you were you,” said the little gentleman, with a smile. “And,” he added, looking round upon them all, “I knew we must be friends sooner or later. Let’s go and see after the cases now.”