“Well, I am a sort of an uncle, you know; that was the relationship we decided upon,” Sir Thomas said. Lucy did not say anything. She laughed, looking at him with a very winning confidence and trust in her eyes. They were quite unabashed in their modest gaze, conscious of no timidity, but there was a gentle affection in them which touched him. However, they were now drawing very near Farafield, and even her composed heart began to beat. She called Jock, very reluctant to be roused from his book, to look at the church-tower, the spire of the town hall, the big roofs of the market. “I don’t want to see them,” Jock said; all he wanted was his story. Perhaps it was _her_ story that made Lucy so animated, one not yet written in any book. Sir Thomas had intended to take Lucy home, to see her in her old-new habitation, and make himself acquainted with her surroundings; and to this end he had telegraphed to his servants to send a carriage to meet the train. But Sir Thomas had formed no idea in his mind of the real aspect of the other side of Lucy’s life; and it had not occurred to him that the people with whom she was going to stay had a right to guide her, equal to that which his aunt exercised. It was a shock to him to see that respectable couple who stood on the very edge of the station waiting for the train, and moved along by its side, panting yet beaming, as it gradually came to a standstill. “Welcome back, my darlings! welcome home, Lucy and Jock!” the woman said. She had not the least pretension to the title of lady. She was enveloped in a large shawl, though it was summer, and she was red and hot. She seized Lucy in her arms, pushing him away as he helped the girl out of the carriage. “Oh, my pet! we have been counting the days, Ford and I; and a’n’t you thankful to get home after being banished among strangers?” Sir Thomas was confounded. He had thought Lucy was to be pitied for the fantastic arrangement which transferred her from his aunt’s house to the care of the old servants, or poor relations, where her position and surroundings would be so different; but the suggestion that she had been banished among strangers took him altogether by surprise. He had been about to take Lucy to the carriage which was waiting; but in a moment she was separated from him, surrounded by these strange people, and drawn in the midst of them toward a fly which was standing near. It was a curious lesson for Sir Tom. He stood aside and looked on while she was taken out of his hands and deposited in the shabbier vehicle, with a sense of the ludicrous which struggled with a less agreeable feeling. There was another group on the platform to whom Lucy’s arrival was very interesting. This was the Rushton family, the lawyer himself, with his wife on his arm, and a tall youth, clad in a light summer suit, with his hands in his pockets, who lounged up and down the railway station after his parents, looking very much out of place, and somewhat ashamed of himself. Mrs.