“Am I to have it all for myself, or will you come back again for it, and take it away? Oh yes, I’m going to school,” said Nello, drooping into indifference. “Will it eat out of my hand? Has it got a name? And am I to have it all for myself?” The rabbit already had eclipsed school for the moment in Nello’s mind. “It’s all for you, and better things than that--and what day are you going, my bonnie little lad?” “To-morrow; oh give it me! I want to show it to Lily,” cried the child. “Thank you very much. Let me run and show it to Lily. We never, never had a rabbit before.” The man stood and looked after Nello with a tender illumination of his dark face. “The old woman likes the other best; but this one is mine,” he said to himself. As for Nello, he flew home with his precious burden, out of breath. He said a man had given it to him; but thought of the donor no more. Randolph spent this, his last evening at home, in anything but an agreeable way; he was altogether unhinged, nervous, and restless, not caring to sit alone. In this respect he was in harmony with the house, which was all upset, tremulous, and full of excitement and expectation. Human nature is always impatient of the slow progress of fate. After the thunderclap of a great event, it is painful to relapse into stillness, and feel the ordinary day resuming its power without any following out of the convulsion. But dramatic sequence, rapidity, and completeness are rare in human affairs. All the little crowd of lookers-on outside the Squire’s room watched eagerly for some change. Two or three women were always hanging about the passages, ready, as they said, to run for anything that might be wanted, and always in the way to learn if anything occurred. They kept a little lamp burning on the table against the wall, at either end of which was a chair, on which sometimes Cook herself, sometimes lesser functionaries, would be found, but always two together, throwing exaggerated shadows on the wall, and talking in whispers of their own fears, and how well they had perceived what was coming. There was not one of them that had not intended, one time or other, to make so bold as to speak to Miss Mary. “But trouble is always soon enough when it comes,” they said, shaking their heads. Then Eastwood would come and join them, his shadow wavering over the staircase. When the privileged persons who had the _entrée_ went or came, Miss Brown or the nurse, or even Mary herself, there was a little thrill and universal movement. “Change! no, there’s no change--there never will be but one change,” Miss Brown said, standing solemnly by the table, with the light on her grave face; and it was upon this Rembrandtish group that Randolph came, as he wandered about in a similar frame of mind, glad to find himself in company with others, though these others were only the maids of the house.