"Me to have dinner wid mamma to-day! Me have pudding!" "That you shall, my sweetest; and everything that's good," assented his mother. In came Japhet at this juncture. "There's a little boy in the hall, sir, asking to see you," said he to his master. "He----" "Oh, we shall have plenty of boys here to-day, asking for a new year's gift," interposed Mrs. Hamlyn, rather impatiently. "Send him a shilling, Philip." "It's not a poor boy, ma'am," answered Japhet, "but a little gentleman: six or seven years old, he looks. He says he particularly wants to see master." Philip Hamlyn smiled. "Particularly wants a shilling, I expect. Send him in, Japhet." The lad came in. A well-dressed beautiful boy, refined in looks and demeanour, bearing in his face a strange likeness to Mr. Hamlyn. He looked about timidly. Eliza, struck with the resemblance, gazed at him. Her husband spoke. "What do you want with me, my lad?" "If you please, sir, are you Mr. Hamlyn?" asked the child, going forward with hesitating steps. "Are you my papa?" Every drop of blood seemed to leave Philip Hamlyn's face and fly to his heart. He could not speak, and looked white as a ghost. "Who are you? What is your name?" imperiously demanded Philip's wife. "It is Walter Hamlyn," replied the lad, in clear, pretty tones. And now it was Mrs. Hamlyn's turn to look white. Walter Hamlyn?--the name of her own dear son! when she had expected him to say Sam Smith, or John Jones! What insolence some people had! "Where do you come from, boy? Who sent you here?" she reiterated. "I come from mamma. She would have sent me before, but I caught cold, and was in bed all last week." Mr. Hamlyn rose. It was a momentous predicament, but he must do the best he could in it. He was a man of nice honour, and he wished with all his heart that the earth would open and engulf him. "Eliza, my love, allow me to deal with this matter," he said, his voice taking a low, tender, considerate tone. "I will question the boy in another room. Some mistake, I reckon." "No, Philip, you must put your questions before me," she said, resolute in her anger. "What is it you are fearing? Better tell me all, however disreputable it may be." "I dare not tell you," he gasped; "it is not--I fear--the disreputable thing you may be fancying." "Not dare! By what right do you call this gentleman 'papa'?" she passionately demanded of the child. "Mamma told me to. She would never let me come home to him before because of not wishing to part from me." Mrs. Hamlyn gazed at him. "Where were you born?" "At Calcutta; that's in India. Mamma brought me home in the _Clipper of the Seas_, and the ship went down, but quite everybody was not lost in it, though papa thought so." The boy had evidently been well instructed. Eliza Hamlyn, grasping the whole truth now, staggered in terror. "Philip! Philip! is it true? Was it _this_ you feared?" He made a motion of assent and covered his face. "Heaven knows I would rather have died."