"Good night, Mattie--oh! I had nearly forgotten to ask you to dine with us on Sunday; you'll be sure to come early?" "Who told you to say that?" "Why, my father, to be sure." "I'm glad of it--I'm glad he thinks better of me," Mattie cried; "oh! Miss Harriet, you don't know how miserable I have been in my heart, lest he--lest he has thought differently of me lately!" "More fancies! I have always said that they were fancies, Mattie." "Ah! I guess pretty near to the truth sometimes." "And tease yourself with a false idea more often--why, you will imagine that _I_ shall think differently of you presently." "No--I don't think you will." "Never, Mattie." "God bless you for that!--if ever I'm in trouble I shall look to you to defend me." "And in my trouble, Mattie?" was the half-laughing rejoinder. "I'll think of you only, fight for you against all your enemies--die for you, if it will do any good. Oh! Miss Harriet, you are growing up a lady very far above me, getting out of my reach like, you won't forget the little girl you were kind to, and shut her wholly from your heart?" Harriet Wesden was touched; ever a sensitive girl, the sight of another's sorrow struck home. She went back a step or two into the parlour. "This isn't like the old Mattie," she said, "the Mattie who always looked at the brightest side of life, and made the best of every difficulty. Is that silly affair of the robbery still preying on your mind?" "On your father's perhaps--not on mine." "Then I'll fight the battle for you to begin with--if there be really one doubt in my father's heart, I'll charge it from its hiding-place to-night. Perhaps I have been wrapped up too much lately in my own selfish thoughts when I might have helped you, Mattie. Will you forgive me?" She stooped and kissed Mattie, whose arms closed round her for a minute with a loving clasp. "I'm better now," said Mattie, "it was fancy, perhaps, a fancy that you, too, were going further away from me--perhaps thinking ill of me. For you were cold and distant when you came here first to-night." "No, no." "Well, that was my fancy, too, it's very likely. I'll say good night now, for it's getting late." "Good night, then." At the door she paused and returned. "Mattie, put on your bonnet and come with me to the end of the street where the omnibus passes. I'm nervous to-night--I don't care to walk alone about these streets again." "Let me call Mr. Sid----" "No, no; you--not him!" she interrupted. "I never leave the shop, Miss Harriet; it's my trust, and your father would not like it. Shall Ann----" "Oh! it does not matter much; you have only made me nervous. I'm very wrong to seek to take you from the business, and father so particular and fidgety. I daresay no one will fly away with me. Good night, my dear." She went away with a bright smile at her own nervousness. That was the last gleam of brightness there for awhile!