“Run where? I was never three miles from here in my life.” “Run to Boston,” returned the boy. “That’s where I live. Cousin Geraldine wants a waiting-maid, and though she’d be mighty overbearing, father would be good, I guess, and so would Lilian,—she’s just about your size.” “Who is Lilian?” Mildred asked, and he replied: “I call her cousin, though she isn’t at all related. Father’s sister Mary married Mr. Veille, and died when Geraldine was born. Ever so many years after uncle married again and had Lilian, but neither he nor his second wife lived long, and as father was appointed guardian for Geraldine and Lilian, they have lived with us ever since. Geraldine is proud, but Lilian is a pretty little thing. You’ll like her if you come.” “Should _you_ be there?” Mildred asked, much more interested in the handsome boy than in Lilian Veille. “I shall be there till I go to college,” returned the boy; “but Geraldine wouldn’t let you have much to say to me, she’s so stuck up, and feels so big. The boys at school told me once that she meant I should marry Lilian, but I sha’n’t if I don’t want to.” Mildred did not answer immediately, but sat thinking intently, with her dark eyes fixed upon the stream running at her feet. Something in her attitude reminded the boy a second time of the resemblance which had at first so impressed him, and turning her face more fully toward him, he said: “Do you know that you look exactly as my mother did?” Mildred started eagerly. The old burning desire to know who she was, or whence she came, was awakened, and grasping the boy’s hand, she said: “Maybe you’re my brother, then. Oh, I wish you was! Come down to the brook, where the sun shines; we can see our faces there and know if _we_ look alike.” She had grasped his arm and was trying to draw him forward, when he dashed all her newly-formed hopes by saying: “It is my step-mother you resemble; she that was the famous beauty, Mildred Howell.” “That pretty lady in the frame?” said Mildred, rather sadly. “Widow Simms says I look like her. And was she your mother?” “She was father’s second wife,” returned the boy, “and I am Lawrence Thornton, of Boston.” Seeing that the name, “Lawrence Thornton,” did not impress the little girl as he fancied it would, the boy proceeded to give her an outline history of himself and family, which last, he said, was one of the oldest, and richest, and most aristocratic in the city. “Have you any sisters?” Mildred asked, and Lawrence replied: “I had a sister once, a good deal older than I am. I don’t remember her much, for when I was five years old,—that’s ten years ago,—she ran off with her music teacher, Mr. Harding, and never came back again; and about a year later, we heard that she was dead, and that there was a girl-baby that died with her——” “Yes; but what of the beautiful lady, your mother?” chimed in Mildred, far more interested in Mildred Howell than in the baby reported to have died with Lawrence’s sister Helen.