‘Did you send it away?’ she said to him, as he kissed her. ‘Yes, grandmamma, this morning.’ ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she said; ‘did you say how much I wanted her, and how I hoped she would come soon?’ ‘Ye-es,’ said John, with a less assured affirmative; then he added, ‘I said everything I could think of. I implored her to come.’ She pressed his hand in hers with a tender clasp. ‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘you know I would never wish you to keep a secret from your grandfather. But unless he asks you--unless he says something--you will not take any notice, John?’ John drew himself apart a little, squaring his young shoulders. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘grandmamma, that I am old enough to write to my mother on my own responsibility, without thinking what even grandfather might say.’ ‘Oh! yes,’ she said, looking up at him with a woman’s admiration for masculine independence, ‘that is quite true.’ ‘And he would be the last to think otherwise. He would see that it was only natural and right.’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, more doubtfully; ‘but he might think he ought to be consulted before you took any step. And that would only be just. What I hope is that Emily, who is so sensible, will take it into her own hands and write that she is coming--without saying anything about an invitation--that would certainly be the best way.’ ‘I think,’ said John, ‘that, whether there were an invitation at all or not, she ought to have come long ago to see----’ He paused with a curious sense of the involved situation. Mrs. Sandford echoed his words with a soft, little sigh. ‘Oh! yes, whatever might have happened, she should have come to see her mother, John.’ But that was not what John intended to say. Mr. Sandford came in shortly after, full of an interview he had just had with Mr. Cattley, who had been corresponding with his brother, the engineer, about John’s plans. ‘It appears that Mr. Cattley’s brother is an engineer who has to do with machinery,’ grandfather said. ‘I don’t know if that is the same thing as a lighthouse man. You will have to go to the foundry and learn how everything is made. It is not surveying and that sort of thing, so far as I can hear. You will have to put your shoulder to the wheel, they tell me, and work with your own hands: but I suppose you will not mind that, John.’ ‘And where is the foundry?’ asked grandmamma, from the sofa. ‘I hope it is not too far away.’ ‘Well, it is not perhaps the place I should have chosen; but what does it matter? one place is very like another. Anything that could harm him would be just as likely to come to him in any other place. It’s in Liverpool, my dear.’ ‘In Liverpool----’ Mrs. Sandford raised herself so quickly and energetically for her weak condition that she looked as if she were about to spring from the sofa. ‘John Sandford,’ she said, ‘you will never let the boy go there.’