A ray of comfort entered Jessie's sad heart. She felt really drawn towards her new stepbrother, and she loved to feel she was being useful. "Yes, I'll help her," she said as brightly as she could for the weariness which was creeping over her. "I have been, a little, already. Can I help you? I'd love to try and make your room a little bit tidier." "Does it look untidy?" asked Charlie, feeling somewhat taken aback. It looked more than untidy, but Jessie was too polite to say so, and as she leaned against the bed she was planning in her mind what she could do to make it nicer for him. "I wish I could get you some flowers," she said eagerly, "some out of our garden. Oh, we had such lots there, such lovely ones, roses, and violets, jessamine and lilac, and may--oh, all sorts. I had a garden of my own, too. Oh, I'd love to take you to granny's, and let you see it all!" Charlie was watching her and listening with intense interest. "How sorry you must be to leave it all!" he remarked sympathetically. "I'd love to lie in a garden with flowers, and the bees humming, and no noise of rattling carts and milk-cans. Oh, Jessie!" but to his dismay Jessie buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. "I can't stay here," she cried, "I can't, I can't! I _must_ go home. I shall die if I don't go home to granp," and she sobbed and sobbed until Charlie was quite frightened. "Jessie, don't--don't--don't cry like that. I'll ask mother to let you go, if you want to so badly--but I wish you didn't," he sighed, his own lips quivering. "I wish you would stay here. I want you _so_ much, I am so lonely and dull, and--and I hoped you were come to stay." Jessie's own tears were checked more quickly by the sight of his than they would have been by any other means. She pulled herself together as well as she could. "No--o, don't ask mother," she said in a choked, thick voice, "it is no use, father would make me stay, and it would only make him angry if we asked him, and I--I want to help you, too," she added, quite truthfully. "I shan't mind so much by and by, p'raps. Don't cry, Charlie. Turn round and listen, and I'll tell you more stories. Then, after breakfast, I'll tidy your room." The violence of Charlie's sobs had quite frightened away and stopped hers, and banished for a time her home-sickness. She put all her thoughts into her coaxing of Charlie, and after a time he raised his head and turned around and faced her, and while he lay back on his pillows, very weary after his excitement, Jessie, the more weary of the two, tried bravely to be cheerful, and to talk brightly, and so Mrs. Lang found them when, a little later, she brought up Charlie's breakfast on a tray.