He could not go on. Ellen ran to beg the particular favour of the travellers to get out the letters immediately. This was easily done, the packages of the labourers being small; and before Frank was called upon to carve for a few dozen hungry people, he had satisfied himself that it was very childish and ungrateful to have been so soon cast down; and his gravity was seen by those who watched him to be of a very different character from that which had seized him three hours before. It was not Ellen’s wish that the little workhouse child should meet his parents for the first time in the presence of strangers. Knowing that Castle and his wife were gathering fruit in their garden, she took the boy there, (after having brushed the dust from his clothes, and set him off to the best advantage,) and put him in at the gate, bidding him not to be frightened if he was spoken to, but say where he came from. The little fellow made no advances. He stood in the middle of the walk, with a finger of each hand in his mouth, and his chin upon his breast. He had not yet learned work-house impudence. Castle was the first to see him, after stooping so long over his peaches that Ellen began to fear the blindness was wilful. “Wife! Wife!” she at length heard him call. “He is come! The boy is come!” Ellen just staid to hear the words “my boy” from both, and stole away. The next time she saw him was as he came between his parents to the dinner table, chattering in his Kentish dialect, and asking to sit on his father’s knee, and be treated with fruit by his mother. “You must be satisfied with being his brother, Harry,” said Ellen to her husband. “He does not need to go begging for a father.” Among the toasts which were given after dinner, some one proposed Mr. Stapleton’s successor, whose name it was strange enough that nobody had been able to learn till this day; and perhaps it was not less remarkable that the name was the same with that of some respected persons now present. They would all fill their cans to the health of Mr. Robert Castle, about to become their neighbour.