“Me!--do you think a lad like yon could trouble _me_?” exclaimed Miss Willsie. “He says, ‘All the scenes through which he has passed will be interesting to his readers.’ That’s in a grand note he sent me this morning--the impertinent boy! My poor Harry, though he’s often in mischief, and my brother thinks him unsteady--I would not give his little finger for half-a-dozen lads like yon.” “But Harry is doing well _now_, Miss Willsie?” said Mrs Atheling. There was a faint emphasis on the now which proved that Harry had not always done well. “Ay,” said Miss Willsie, drily; “and so Chairles has settled to his business--that’s aye a comfort. If there’s one thing that troubles me, it is to see young folk growing up in idleness; I pity them, now, that are genteel and have daughters. What are you going to do, Mrs Atheling, with these girls of yours?” Mrs Atheling’s eyes sought them out with fond yet not untroubled observation. There was Marian’s beautiful head before the other window, looking as if it had arrested and detained the sunbeams, long ago departed in the west; and there was Agnes, graceful, animated, and intelligent, watching, with an affectionate and only half-conscious admiration, her sister’s beauty. Their mother smiled to herself and sighed. Even her anxiety, looking at them thus, was but another name for delight. “Agnes,” said Marian at the other window, half whispering, half aloud--“Agnes! Harry says Mr Endicott has published a book.” With a slight start and a slight blush Agnes turned round. Mr Foggo S. Endicott was tall, very thin, had an extremely lofty mien, and a pair of spectacles. He was eight-and-twenty, whiskerless, sallow, and by no means handsome: he held his thin head very high, and delivered his sentiments into the air when he spoke, but rarely bent from his altitude to address any one in particular. But he heard the whisper in a moment: in his very elbows, as you stood behind him, you could see the sudden consciousness. He perceived, though he did not look at her, the eager, bright, blushing, half-reverential glance of Agnes, and, conscious to his very finger-points, raised his thin head to its fullest elevation, and pretended not to hear. Agnes blushed: it was with sudden interest, curiosity, reverence, made more personal and exciting by her own venture. Nothing had been heard yet of this venture, though it was nearly a month since Charlie took it to Mr Burlington, and the young genius looked with humble and earnest attention upon one who really had been permitted to make his utterance to the ear of all the world. He _had_ published a book; he was a real genuine printed author. The lips of Agnes parted with a quick breath of eagerness; she looked up at him with a blush on her cheek, and a light in her eye. A thrill of wonder and excitement came over her: would people by-and-by regard herself in the same light?