With him was a girl, tall, slim, and lightly made, though of nicely rounded figure. In height she looked like seventeen, but her dress was more childish than usual at that age; and the contour of her smooth cheeks and short rounded chin, her long neck, her happy blue eyes, fully opened like those of a child, her fair rosy skin and fresh simple air, might almost have belonged to seven years old: and there was all the earnestness, innocence, and careless ease of childhood in her movements and gestures, as she sprang forward to meet Miss Charlecote, exclaiming, 'Robin said I might come.' 'And very right of him. You are both come to tea?' she added, in affirmative interrogation, as she shook hands with the young man. 'No, thank you,' he answered; 'at least I only brought Phoebe, having rescued her from Miss Fennimore's clutches. I must be at dinner. But I will come again for her.' And he yawned wearily. 'I will drive her back; you are tired.' 'No!' he said. 'At least the walk is one of the few tolerable things there is. I'll come as soon as I can escape, Phoebe. Past seven--I must go!' 'Can't you stay? I could find some food for you.' 'No, thank you,' he still said; 'I do not know whether Mervyn will come home, and there must not be too many empty chairs. Good-bye!' and he walked off with long strides, but with stooping shoulders, and an air of dejection almost amounting to discontent. 'Poor Robin!' said Honora, 'I wish he could have stayed.' 'He would have liked it very much,' said Phoebe, casting wistful glances toward him. 'What a pity he did not give notice of his intentions at home!' 'He never will. He particularly dislikes--' 'What?' as Phoebe paused and coloured. 'Saying anything to anybody,' she answered with a little smile. 'He cannot endure remarks.' 'I am a very sober old body for a visit to me to be the occasion of remarks!' said Honor, laughing more merrily than perhaps Robert himself could have done; but Phoebe answered with grave, straightforward sincerity, 'Yes, but he did not know if Lucy might not be come home.' Honora sighed, but playfully said, 'In which case he would have stayed?' 'No,' said the still grave girl, 'he would have been still less likely to do so.' 'Ah! the remarks would have been more pointed! But he has brought you at any rate, and that is something! How did he achieve it?' 'Miss Fennimore is really quite ready to be kind,' said Phoebe, earnestly, with an air of defence, 'whenever we have finished all that we have to do.' 'And when is that?' asked Honor, smiling. 'Now for once,' answered Phoebe, with a bright arch look. 'Yes, I sometimes can; and so does Bertha when she tries; and, indeed, Miss Charlecote, I do like Miss Fennimore; she never is hard upon poor Maria. No governess we ever had made her cry so seldom.'