“Go and fetch him,” cried Aunt Milly, turning her out of the room. Aunt Milly was nearly as delighted as she was; but she saw it was hard upon me to be continually reminded that Harry was to be gone so soon. By way of putting it out of my mind, she began such a lecture about letting babies walk too soon, and about weak ankles and bowed legs and all kinds of horrors, that I snatched my boy up on my knee, and was as much alarmed as I had been overjoyed. When Harry came, and found me half frightened to allow baby to exhibit his new accomplishment, and Aunt Milly doing her best to soften down her own declarations, and convince me that she referred to babies in general, and not to my boy, he burst into fits of laughter. I rather think he kissed us all round, Aunt Milly and all. He was in very high spirits that day. It did not occur to him what a struggle I had come through before I overcame Miss Mortimer’s temptation; he was contented to think I had fainted from heat and excitement and all the fatigue I had been exposed to of late; and it was a comfort to him to have my real voluntary consent to his going away. Then this was to be my home, and here was my dear kind friend beside me. His heart rose, he laughed out his amusement and pleasure with the freedom of a young man in the height of his strength and hope. The sound startled the unaccustomed walls. I saw Aunt Milly look at him with a kind of delighted surprise and pleasure. Youth had not been here for long. I wondered did manhood, after Harry’s fashion of it, belong to the Mortimers at all? Many a day since, sitting in these silent rooms, the echo of Harry’s laugh has come back to me ringing like silver bells. Ah, hush! we shall all laugh when he comes back. But when Lizzie came to take her charge, the expression of the girl’s face had completely changed. She took the child away with a certain frightened gravity that had a great effect upon me. Aunt Milly had left me by this time, and Harry had gone out to see the grounds, leaving me to rest. Resting was not very much in my way; of course I got up from the sofa the moment they were gone. What good would it do me, does anybody suppose, to lie there and murder myself with thinking? I went after Lizzie to ask her what was wrong. Lizzie was very slow to answer. There was “naething wrang; she wasna minding. The man in blacks had asked if she was the nurse or the nursery-maid. But it’s no my place to answer questions,” said Lizzie, with indignation, “and thae English they’re that saucy, they pretend they dinna ken what I’m saying. Eh, I would just like to let them ken, leddies and gentlemen ay ken grand what I’m saying! but they’ve nae education: ’Menico says that himsel’.” “But what does ’Menico know about education, Lizzie?” said I.