“You little toad, don’t you forgive me without that? I never meant to hurt you,” he said: but melting, he added, “give it here.” Nello’s epistle, written across the lined paper, in big letters, did not seem to require any ceremony as a private communication. The head boy read it and laughed. “They won’t pay any attention,” he said; “they never do. Little boys are always miserable. And won’t you catch it from Swan if he sees it!” “It is for my sister Lily; it is not for Mr. Swan,” cried the child, upon which the head boy laughed again. That letter never reached Penninghame. The schoolmaster read it according to his orders, and put it into the fire. He wrote himself to the address which Nello had given, to say that the little gentleman was rather homesick, but pretty well; and that perhaps it would be better, in the circumstances, not to write to him till he had got a little settled down, and used to his new home. He hoped his little pupil would soon be able to write a decent letter; but he feared his education had been very much neglected hitherto, Mr. Swan wrote. Thus it came to pass that Nello lived on, day after day, eagerly expecting some event which never happened. He expected, first of all, Mary to arrive in a beautiful chariot, such as was wont to appear in Lily’s stories, with beautiful prancing horses--(where they were to come from, Nello never asked himself, though he was intimately acquainted with the two brown ponies and the cob, which were all the inhabitants of the Squire’s stables), and with an aspect splendid, but severe, to proceed to the punishment of his adversaries. Nello did not settle what deaths they were to die; but all was arranged except that insignificant circumstance. Mary would come; she would punish all who had done wrong; she would give presents to those who had been kind; and all the boys who had laughed at little Nello would see him drive away glorious behind those horses, with their arching necks, and high-stepping, dainty feet. Then after a few days, which produced nothing, Nello settled, with a pang of visionary disappointment, that it was Mr. Pen who could come. He would not make a splendid dash up to the door like Mary in her chariot; but still he would deliver the little captive. Another day, and Nello, coming down and down in his demands, thought it might at least be Martuccia, or perhaps Miss Brown, who would come for him. That would not be so satisfactory to his pride, for he felt that the boys would laugh and jeer at him, and say it was his nurse who had come; but still even Miss Brown would be good to see in this strange place. At the end of the week, however, all Nello’s courage fled. He thought then faintly of a letter, and watched when the postman came with packets of letters for the other boys. He could not read writing very well; but he could make it out if they would only write to him. Why would not they write to him? Had they forgotten him altogether, clean forgotten him, though he had