"Dear me, Archie, how cross you are this morning!" observed Mattie, in a cheerful voice, as she fidgeted the papers on the table. "Why, the Friary is that shabby little cottage just above us,--not a stone's throw from this house." "Indeed? Well, I cannot say I am much interested in the movements of my neighbors. I am not a gossip like you, Mattie!"--another fling at poor Mattie. "I wish you would leave those papers alone. You know I never allow my things to be tidied, as you call it, and I am really very busy just now. I am in the middle of accounts, and I have to write to Grace and----" "Well, I thought you would like to know." And Mattie looked rather crestfallen and disappointed. "You talked so much about those young ladies some weeks ago, and seemed quite sorry not to see them again; and now----" but here Archie's indifference vanished, and he looked up eagerly. "What young ladies? Not those in Milner's Library, who asked about the dressmaker?" "The very same," returned his sister, delighted at this change of manner. "Oh, I have so much to tell you that I must sit down," planting herself comfortably on the arm of an easy-chair near him. Another time Archie would have rebuked her for her unlady-like attitude, and told her, probably, that Grace never did such things; but now his interest was so excited that he let it pass for once. He even suffered her to take off her old hat and deposit it unreproved on the top of his cherished papers. "I was over at Crump's this morning, to speak to Bobbie about weeding the garden, when I was surprised to see a railway-van unloading furniture at the Friary." "What an absurd name!" _sotto voce_ from Archie: but he offered no further check to Mattie's gossip. "I asked Mrs. Crump, as a matter of course, the name of the new people; and she said it was Challoner. There was a mother and three daughters, she believed. She had seen two of them,--pretty, nice-spoken young creatures, and quite ladies. They had been down before to see the cottage and to have it done up. It looks quite a different place already,--nicely painted, and the shrubs trimmed. The door was open, and as I stood at Mrs. Crump's window, peeping between her geraniums, I saw such a respectable gray-haired woman, like an upper servant, carrying something into the house; and a moment after one of those young ladies we saw in the Library--not the pretty one, but the other--came to the door and spoke to the men." "Are you sure you did not make a mistake, Mattie?" asked her brother, incredulously. "You are very short-sighted: perhaps you did not see correctly. How can those stylish-looking girls live in such a shabby place? I can hardly believe it possible." "Oh, it was the same, I am positive about that. She was in the same cambric dress you admired. I could see distinctly. I watched her for a long time; and then the pretty one came out and joined her. She is pretty, Archie, she has such a lovely complexion."