“Certainly not!” replied Margaret warmly. “The sister who told you so knew nothing about men. My dear husband is more like an angel than a man, and there are many like him. You mustn’t believe such nonsense, Miss Brandt! I am sure you never heard your parents say such a silly thing!” “O! my father and mother! I never remember hearing them say anything!” replied Miss Brandt. She had crept closer and closer to Mrs. Pullen as she spoke, and now encircled her waist with her arm, and leaned her head upon her shoulder. It was not a position that Margaret liked, nor one she would have expected from a woman on so short an acquaintance, but she did not wish to appear unkind by telling Miss Brandt to move further away. The poor girl was evidently quite unused to the ways and customs of Society, she seemed moreover very friendless and dependent--so Margaret laid her solecism down to ignorance and let her head rest where she had placed it, resolving inwardly meanwhile that she would not subject herself to be treated in so familiar a manner again. “Don’t you remember your parents then?” she asked her presently. “Hardly! I saw so little of them,” said Miss Brandt, “my father was a great doctor and scientist, I believe, and I am not quite sure if he knew that he had a daughter!” “O! my dear, what nonsense!” “But it is true, Mrs. Pullen! He was always shut up in his laboratory, and I was not allowed to go near that part of the house. I suppose he was very clever and all that--but he was too much engaged in making experiments to take any notice of me, and I am sure I never wanted to see him!” “How very sad! But you had your mother to turn to for consolation and company, whilst she lived, surely?” “O! my mother!” echoed Harriet, carelessly. “Yes! my mother! Well! I don’t think I knew much more of her either. The ladies in Jamaica get very lazy, you know, and keep a good deal to their own rooms. The person there I loved best of all, was old Pete, the overseer!” “The overseer!” “Of the estate and niggers, you know! We had plenty of niggers on the coffee plantation, regular African fellows, with woolly heads and blubber lips, and yellow whites to their eyes. When I was a little thing of four years old, Pete used to let me whip the little niggers for a treat, when they had done anything wrong. It used to make me laugh to see them wriggle their legs under the whip and cry!” “O! don’t, Miss Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret Pullen, in a voice of pain.