furniture, was not a place for a fantastical young girl; she poked about the greenhouses in all the back corners where the gardener did not want her, and where she was always sweeping down his flower-pots; she rummaged through the great suites of rooms that nobody ever occupied; she came into the library to help me with my accounts, and tease me out of my wits; she went fishing about the house through all the nooks and corners, and read all the old novels over again; and then she could not persuade and worry me into doing everything she pleased, as she could her father. I believe just at that moment Sara being at the Park was a great comfort to me. CHAPTER III. One day in the week I found little Sara all by herself in the library, very much engrossed about something. Indeed, she was in deep study, if that was to be believed. She had the great volume of the history of the county spread out before her, and a “Peerage” by her side; and at her other hand were some trumpery little books about Chester, of the handbook kind, Chester being, as everybody knows, a place of great antiquity, and, indeed, a kind of show place in this part of the country. She did not hear me when I came in, and as I came to an astonished pause behind her, quite bewildered to know what the little kitten could want with that great book, it was impossible she could see me. She was quite at the end of the county history, going over all the details about the families, and looking up the peerage, I could see, to find out all the connections and collateral branches. What could the child be so anxious about? Not our family, certainly, for we had no collateral branches. Just once for an instant, it shot through my mind, that her father might somehow have put that sly secret idea of his own, that, if she played her cards well, we might leave her heiress of the Park, in little Sara’s head; but a moment’s thought convinced me that there was nothing in that. She was far too bold and simple for any such plan; she would have repeated it out to me directly and scorned it; and she had not an idea of the value of wealth, or what was the good of being very rich. If I could have made her a Mortimer, she might have thought twice about it, but not for being made simply an heiress; that was a matter to which Sara was quite indifferent. But if it could not be us, who could it be? Had the child, perhaps, an admirer among some of the county families? I made a little rustle, I suppose, as I stood watching her; for she turned sharp round, found me out, and flushed up violently. In her hasty annoyance she threw the book over, shutting it upon her morsel of a hand, and defied me, turning round on her seat. Certainly if Mr. Cresswell had instructed his daughter to be very good, and amiable, and conciliatory, he had taken the very best plan to bring about a failure. Oh! but she was contrairy; the poor dear unfortunate man, what a life he must have led with that little puss!