"I don't mind your going to Maxwell's cottage, but you must never take Fritz with you. He is not allowed in that wood at all. Do you quite understand?" "Yes, but I'm very sorry, for Fritz doesn't like being left behind; the tears were in his eyes when nurse told him he wasn't to go with me. You see, no one talks to him like I do. He likes me to tell him stories, and I told him when I came back about my visit, so he wants to go. But I won't take him with me if you say no." When she was leaving him that night for bed, she paused a moment as she wished him good-night. "Uncle Edward, when you say your prayers to-night, will you ask God to make Tommy come back home? His mother does want him so badly." "I will leave you to do that," was the curt reply. "Well, if you don't want to pray for Tommy, pray for God's probable sons, won't you? Do, Uncle Edward. Mrs. Maxwell said the only thing that comforted her is asking God to bring Tommy back." Sir Edward made no reply, only dismissed her more peremptorily than usual, and when she had left the room he leaned his arms on the chimney piece, and resting his head on them, gazed silently into the fire with a knitted brow. His thoughts did not soothe him, for he presently raised his head with a short laugh, saying to himself,-- "Where is my cigar-case? I will go and have a smoke to get rid of this fit of the blues. I shall have to curb that child's tongue a little. She is getting too troublesome." And while he was pacing moodily up and down the terrace outside, a little white-robed figure, with bent head and closed eyes, was saying softly and reverently as she knelt at her nurse's knee-- "And, O God, bring Tommy back, and don't let him be a probable son any more. Bring him home very soon, please, and will you bring back all your probable sons who are running away from you, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." Sir Edward did not escape several visits from ladies in the neighborhood offering to befriend his little niece, but all these overtures were courteously and firmly rejected. He told them the child was happy with her nurse, he did not wish her to mix with other children at present, and a year or two hence would be quite time enough to think about her education. So Milly was left alone, more than one mother remarking with a shake of the head-- "It's a sad life for a child, but Sir Edward is peculiar, and when he gets a notion into his head he keeps to it." The child was not unhappy, and when the days grew shorter, and her rambles out of doors were curtailed, she would lie on the tiger-skin by the hall fire with Fritz for the hour together, pouring out to him all her childish confidences. Sometimes her uncle would find her perched on the broad window-seat half-way up the staircase, with her little face pressed against the windowpanes, and late on one very cold afternoon in November he remonstrated with her. "It is too cold for you here, Millicent," he said sternly; "you ought to be in the nursery."