to be taken in so easily! as if they did not know far more than Mrs. Lennox did, who thus lent herself to a falsehood! When the children came down, dressed in their black frocks, with eyes wide open and full of eager curiosity, Mrs. Lennox was daunted by the cynical air with which Sophy, her namesake and godchild, regarded her. “You needn’t say anything to me about catching up mamma, for I know better,” the child said, vindictively. “She likes somebody else better than us, and she has just gone away.” “Rosalind,” Mrs. Lennox cried, in dismay, “I hope that woman is not coming with us, that horrible woman that puts such things into the children’s heads. I hope you have sent Russell away.” But when the little ones were all packed in the carriage with their aunt, who could not endure to see any one cry, there was a burst of simultaneous weeping. “I neber love nobody but Nana. I do to nobody but Nana,” little Johnny shouted. His little sister said nothing, but her small mouth quivered, and the piteous aspect of her face, struggling against a passion of restrained grief, was the most painful of all. Sophy, however, continued defiant. “You may send her away, but me and Reginald will have her back again,” she said. Aunt Sophy could scarcely have been more frightened had she taken a collection of bombshells with her into the carriage. The absence of mamma was little to the children, who had been so much separated from her by their father’s long illness; but Russell, the “Nana” of their baby affections, had a closer hold.