"So do I," said Miss Bettina, in a tart tone. "One would think the bank was as high as a house. They'd climb up a house, boys would, if they thought they should find blackberries growing upon its roof. Ah, never shall I forget--it has this moment recurred to my mind--Leo's father coming home in a sorry plight when he was a boy. He went blackberrying. He went without anybody's knowledge, too, and was absent for hours, and we grew alarmed at home, as was natural, for he was but a little fellow of eight. I remember my dear mother feared he had fallen into some pond, but we children thought Johnny had gone after the wild-beast caravan, which had been in the town exhibiting two bears and an elephant. He arrived at home at dusk; and I'm sure he looked more fit to belong to a caravan than to a gentleman's house. His knees were out of his trousers, and his brown-holland blouse was in flounces, and his shirt-frill had three hanging rents in it, and his hair and face and hands were crimson with the stains, causing my mother to cry out with fear at the first sight of him. To crown all, he had filled his new straw hat with the blackberries, and the juice was dropping through the crown! John does not forget that exploit, I know, to this day. Your grandpapa gave him a sound whipping and sent him to bed supperless; not so much for the plight he had put himself into as for roaming out alone and frightening my dear mother. Johnny was ill for three days afterwards with stomach-ache, from the quantity he had devoured. _He_ remembers blackberrying, I know; and I should think Mr. Leo will, after this." "I hope his arm will soon be well!" "Dr. Keen might have mentioned what surgeon was attending to it! if Mark Cray had remained at Hallingham," continued Miss Bettina, very sharply--for it was impossible for her to speak of that exit of Mark's without sharpness--"he might have gone over by rail, and seen that it was being properly----What do you say, Neal?" Miss Bettina's interruption was caused by the entrance of Neal. Mrs. Cray's maid had come round, and was waiting to speak to Miss Sara. "Let her come in," said Miss Bettina. The tone was as sharp a one as that just given to the absent Mark. Caroline's maid, a remarkably fashionable damsel, did not reign in the favour of Miss Bettina. She came in in obedience to orders; a pink gauze bonnet on the back of her head, and a pair of dirty and very tight straw-coloured gloves strained on her hands. Miss Bettina's countenance lost none of its severity as she surveyed her. "What do you want, Long?" "If you please, mem, my message is to Miss Sara Davenal," returned Long, pertly, for she did not like Miss Bettina any more than Miss Bettina liked her.