Horace, in his infirmity with its attendant jealousy, had been tempted to look upon Agneta as an interloper between him and his brother, and it had only been Harry’s staunchness to both which had preserved the fraternal bond intact in either case. Harry was the medium, not only of communication—seeing that Horry peevishly complained he could never hear his sister’s soft treble voice—but of such mild family affection as subsisted between the other two. Most girls in Agneta Stanhope’s class would find it difficult to conceive that a fortnight’s stay with her brothers, in the rusticity of their new estate, could be a treat of treats to Agneta, having all that was wanting to render it ‘perfectly exquisite,’ in the extravagance of her girlish speech, supplied by the misfortune of Miss Dennison’s being attacked by influenza on the eve of their setting out, and so prevented from accompanying her pupil. ‘Poor dear old Madam Punctilio, as Harry wickedly nicknames her,’ reflected Agneta gleefully; ‘she would undoubtedly have been in the way and spoiled so much. Since she is in no danger and is not suffering particularly, while she misses nothing by being detained in her comfortable quarters at Thornley Lodge and escaping the worse than bachelors’ housekeeping at the Farm, it is not cruel, is it? to be a little glad that she has become so opportunely ill?’ Unfortunately Mrs. Stanhope had not anticipated the possibility of the accident, when she consented, with considerable hesitation and reluctance, to allow Agneta to go to her brothers for a couple of weeks. But Mrs. Stanhope could not bring herself to separate entirely the members of the same family, though Harry and Horace had been disappointing in failing to develop any faculties their friends could lay hold of, to push them on in the world, and in the stupid lads’ obstinately sticking to each other, so as to make matters worse, until this miserable _dernier ressort_ of a farm had to be tolerated for them, still the young men had not done anything which could warrant their aunt in forbidding their sister to visit them. As an habitual practice, of course, living with her brothers in their primitive establishment, was not to be thought of for Agneta. Her prospects must be considered in the first place; her time was not to be wasted. But she had not yet come out, she had not gone far beyond the point when childhood and girlhood meet. If ever the liberty were to be permitted, here was the opportunity when she would incur the least observation, and run the slightest risk. For Miss Dennison would still be responsible, since it would be as her pupil, in her charge, that Agneta should go to Copley Grange Farm. And very likely a single trial of the life on which her brothers had resolved—a species of Robinson Crusoe isolation—rather than any steep decline into a lower stratum of society, in Mrs. Stanhope’s mind, would rob the girl of any farther inclination to go to them.