‘And older too,’ said Harry. ‘I am eight and you are six. You’re not six till your birthday, and Alice is sixteen, and me and Frank----’ ‘Nurse says girls are quite different,’ said little Edie. ‘You are only boys, you two. Are you Mr. Renton, as well as Laurie, Mr. Laurie’s brother?--how funny it would be to call you that!--or have you another name all to yourself?’ ‘I am Frank,’ said the Guardsman, laughing; and then the boys drew near him, and Alice looked up smiling from her tea-making, and a certain acquaintance sprang up. To know that Alice was sixteen on the one side,--and to know that this young fellow, who gazed and addressed her in a tone so different from Laurie’s tone, for instance, was Frank, seemed somehow to give each of them a certain hold on the other. Frank put down his hat, and drew his chair to the table; and by-and-by they were all sitting round it, drinking tea and talking. ‘Laurie’s brother is not so stupid as I thought he was,’ the padrona said afterwards, as she made her _resumé_ of the whole proceedings; and with that slight remark Mrs. Severn dismissed the matter from her thoughts. Laurie himself was trouble enough, the foolish fellow; but that any further complication should arise through Laurie’s brother was a thing which never entered into her mind. When the two brothers left the house there was silence between them for some time. Indeed, little was said till they had got as far as Harley Street. Then, all at once, Laurie spoke. ‘You were out of your element in the Square,’ he said, with a little forced laugh. ‘You don’t understand the kind of thing; but I can tell you it is no small matter to me to have such a house to go to.’ This was uttered abruptly, and was not at all what he meant to say. To seem to apologise for the padrona and her house was as far as possible from his intention, and yet it sounded like an apology in his brother’s ears. ‘I daresay,’ said Frank; and then he too added hastily, with a shade of embarrassment,--‘She is quite lovely, I think.’ ‘No;--do you though?’ cried Laurie, with a mixture of amaze, and delight, and indignation. ‘I never saw you look at her even, all the time we were there.’ ‘And she plays wonderfully,’ said Frank. ‘Music goes to one’s heart, you know, coming like that, out of the dark, one can’t tell how. I thought she must be blind, or consumptive, or something; and then to see a face like a little rose!’ ‘Oh, you mean Alice,’ said Laurie, drawing a long breath of relief, and amusement, and kindly contempt. Alice was a very nice little thing; but how it should occur to any one to put her in the first place! To be sure, the boy was only twenty. Laurie, who was twenty-four, felt the difference strongly.