"Those ladies don't belong to you, do they?" cried Mrs. Aultane, beginning to fear she had made some mistake in her treatment of the ladies in question, if they did belong to Anderson. "Ladies! what ladies?" "Those to whom Travice Arkell is talking. He has been with them all day." "They don't belong to me. What of them?" "Nothing. Only these inferior people, strangers, have no right to push themselves amidst us, taking up the best places. We are obliged to draw a line, you know, in this manufacturing town; and none but strangers, ignorant of our distinctions, would dare to break it." Captain Anderson laughed; he could not quite understand. "I don't think they are inferior," he said, indicating the two ladies. "Anything but that, although they may belong to manufacturers, and not be in your set. The younger one is charming; so is Lucy Arkell." Mrs. Aultane vouchsafed no reply. It was rank heresy. The college boys were making a noise and commotion at the other end of the hall, and the master called out sharply-- "Arkell, keep those boys in order." Travice sauntered towards them, gave his commands for silence, and returned to the place from whence he came. Henry Arkell came into the hall from the upper room, and there was a lull in the proceedings. The carriages came up but slowly. "Don't you think we might walk home, Mrs. James?" inquired the younger lady. "I do not care to stay here longer to be stared at. I never saw people stare so in my life." She said it with reason. Many were staring, and not in a lady-like manner, but with assuming manner and eye-glass to eye. "They look just as though they thought we had no right to be here, Mrs. James." "Possibly, my dear. It may be the Westerbury custom to stare at strangers. But I cannot allow you to walk home; you have thin shoes on. Mrs. St. John is certain to send your carriage, or hers." "You did well, Harry," cried Travice Arkell, laying his hand on the young boy's shoulders. "Many a fair dame would give her price for your voice." "And for something else belonging to you," added Mrs. James, taking the boy's hand and holding him before her as she gazed. "It is the very face; the very same face that your mother's was at your age." "Did you know mamma then? Then, you must be a friend of hers," was Henry Arkell's eager answer. "No, I never was her friend--in that sense. I was a governess in a branch of the Cheveley family, and Miss Lucy Cheveley and her father the colonel used to visit there. She had a charming voice, too; just as you have. Ah, dear me! speaking to you and your sister here, her children, it serves to remind me how time has flown." "I am reminded of that, when I look at Captain Anderson here," said Travice Arkell, with a laugh. "Only the other day he was a schoolboy." "If you want to be reminded of that, you need only look at yourself," retorted Anderson. "You have shot up into a maypole."