In the day-time, it was rather dull. Susie was five years older than he, going on for twelve, and knowing everything. She got to saying, ‘Go away, child,’ when he asked her to come and play. As he remembered her, she never played, but was always at her needlework or something, almost worse than mamma--and there would be long conversations between those two in the winter’s afternoon, while he was playing at coach and horses, made with chairs, in the other room, the back parlour, which was the place where they had their meals. Sometimes when he got tired of the obstinacy of Dobbin, who was the big mahogany arm-chair, and who would have his own way, and jibbed abominably, he would catch a glimpse through the half-opened folding-doors of those two over the fire. They always spoke very low, and sometimes cried--and, if he came a little near, would give each other a frightened look and say, ‘Not a word before the boy.’ Johnnie’s ears got very quick to those words--he heard them when they were whispered, and sometimes he heard them through his sleep. Could they be talking of anything naughty, or what was it so necessary that he must not know? There came a time at last when all this confused mystery came to a climax. There were hasty comings and goings, men at the door whose heavy loud knockings filled the house with dismay, stealthy entrances in the dark: for Johnnie a succession of troubled dreams, of figures flitting into his room in the middle of night, but never papa in the old jovial way to carry him down to the parlour with its staring candles. No one thought of such indulgences now. If they were wrong, they were all over. When he awoke he saw, half awake and half dreaming, sometimes his father, though he had been told he was away, sometimes his mother; other strange visitors flitting like ghosts, all confusion and disorder, the night turned into day. He was himself kept in corners in the daylight, or sent into the garden to play, or shut up in the back parlour with his toys. It seemed to Johnnie that they must think he wanted nothing but those toys, and never could understand that to play without any companions, without any wish for playing, was impossible; but he was a dutiful child, and tried to do what he was told. It was at this strange and uncomfortable period that he learned how nice it is to have a book, after you have exhausted all your solitary inventions and played at everything you know. The fascination of the books; however, added to the confusion of everything. Johnnie mixed up Robinson Crusoe with the agitating phantasmagoria of his little life. He thought that perhaps it was from the savages his father was hiding,--for he was sure that it was his father he saw in those visions of the night, though every one said he had gone away. Then there came a lull in the agitation, and silence fell upon the house. Mamma and Susie cried a great deal, and were together more than ever, but Johnnie’s dreams stopped, and he saw no