This passage Squire John read twice, and then glanced again at the “My Dear Dora” with which the letter commenced. “The doctor is very affectionate,” he said, “calling you ‘Dear Dora,’ though perhaps he has a right, for I remember thinking he admired you.” Dora was bending over Daisy, whom she was rocking to sleep, and he did not see her blushes as she replied: “That is a very common way of addressing people, and means nothing at all.” Perhaps the squire believed this, but he was quite absent-minded the remainder of the day, and in the evening was twice checkmated by Dora, when his usual custom had been to checkmate her. Dora’s first intention was to answer the doctor’s letter at once, but sickness among the children prevented her from doing so, and when she was at last free to write, the disposition had in a measure left her, and so the answer for which the doctor waited so anxiously was not sent. CHAPTER XIV. IN THE SPRING. About the house at Beechwood the May flowers were blooming, and in the maple-trees the birds were building their nests, cooing lovingly to each other as they did so, and seeming all unconscious of the young heart which within the doors felt that never before had there come to it a spring so full of sorrow and harrowing dread. Jessie and Bell Verner were both there now, and Jessie had brought two immense trunks and a hat-box, as if her intention was to spend the entire summer. She was just as merry and hoydenish as of old, romping with the children in the grass and on the nursery floor, herself the veriest child among them, while her ringing laugh woke all the echoes of the place and made even the Squire join in it, and try to act young again. Both Jessie and Bell noted the change in Dora, and Jessie asked her outright what it was that made her look so frightened, as if constantly in fear of something; but Dora could not tell what she feared, for she had scarcely dared to define to herself the meaning of Squire Russell’s manner toward her. A stranger would have perceived no difference in his treatment of her now and when his wife was living, but Dora felt the change, and it almost drove her wild, making her one day sharply rebuke the little Daisy for calling her mamma. “I am not your mother,” she said fiercely. “Your mamma is dead, and I am only Auntie.” The child looked up in surprise, but called her mamma just the same, while Dora’s eyelids closed tightly over the hot tears she thus kept from falling. That day when Johnnie came home from school at dinner-time he showed unmistakable marks of having been in a fight, and when questioned by his father as to the cause of his black eye, broke out furiously: