"In course he don't. Leifchild ain't a fool. He gets his percentage--and a good fat percentage too. The thing can afford it. Do as you like, you know, Miss Arkell; but if you take my advice, you mayn't find cause to be sorry for it in the end." "Thank you," said Mildred, "I will think of it." "Give Aunt Betsey's dear love to Travice," whispered Mrs. Dundyke, when Mildred was leaving, "and my best and truest regards to Mr. Arkell. And oh, Miss Mildred, if you could prevail upon them to let Travice come back with you to visit me, I should not know how to be happy enough! I have always so loved children; and David would like it, too." "Is there any chance, think you?" returned Mildred. "No, no, there is none; his mother would be indignant at the presumption of the request," concluded Betsey in her bitter conviction. And she was not mistaken. CHAPTER XIV. OLD YEARS BACK AGAIN. Mildred's heart ached with the changes; Peter was growing into a middle-aged man, his hair beginning to silver, his tall back bowed with care. They were gathered in the old familiar sitting-room the night of her arrival at Westerbury. Peter and Mildred sat at the table, Mrs. Peter Arkell lay on her sofa; the children remained orderly on the hearth rug. Lucy was getting a great girl now; little Harry--a most lovely child, his face the counterpart of his mother's--was but three years old. Never but once in her life had Mildred seen the exquisite face of Miss Lucy Cheveley; it had never left her memory. The same, same face was before her now, looking upwards from the sofa, not a whit altered--not a shade less beautiful. But Mildred had now become aware of a fact which she had not known previously--Peter had kept it from her in his letters--that the defect in Mrs. Peter Arkell's back had become more formidable, giving her pain nearly always. They had had a hard, reclining sofa made, a little raised at the one end; and here she had to lie a great deal, some days only getting up from it to meals. "I am half afraid to encounter your wife," Mildred had said, as she walked home with Peter from the station--for there was a railway from London now, and the old coaching days had vanished for ever. "She is one of the Dewsbury family--of Mrs. Dewsbury's, at any rate--and I am but a dependent in it." "Oh, Mildred! you little know my dear wife; but she is one in a thousand. She is very poorly this evening, and is so vexed at it; she says you will not think she welcomes you as she ought." "What is it that is really the matter with her? Is it the spine? You did not tell me all this in your letters." "It is the spine. She was never strong, you may be aware; and I believe there occurred some slight injury to it when the boy was born. The doctors think she will get stronger again; but I don't know." "Is she in pain? Does she walk out?"