"You forget, Heather, that you are not a child," she said. "Jump up and attend to the Major's comforts. I do not forget, Major, how particular you used to be about your toast. You were an awful fidget when you were a young man."

"Ha! ha!" said my father. "Ha! ha! And I am an awful fidget still, Pen, an awful fidget. But Heather makes good toast; she's a fine girl—that is, she will be, when I have togged her up a bit."

Here he winked at me, and Aunt Penelope turned aside as though she could scarcely bear the sight. After tea, to my infinite disgust, I was requested to leave the room. I went up to my tiny room, and, to judge from the rise and fall of two voices, an animated discussion was going on downstairs. At the end of half an hour Aunt Penelope called to me to come down. As I entered the room the parrot said, "Stop knocking at the door!" and my father remarked:

"I wonder, Penelope, you don't choke that bird!" Aunt Penelope turned to me with tears in her eyes.

"Heather, your father wishes you to join him in London at once. He has arranged, however, that you shall spend a certain portion of each year with me."

"Yes," remarked my father, "the dull time in the autumn. You shall always have her back then—that is, until she marries a duke or someone worthy of her."

"Am I really to go with you, Daddy?" I asked. "Really and truly?"

"Not to come with me to-night, pretty pet," he answered, pinching my cheek as he spoke. "I must find a habitation worthy of my little girl. But early next week your aunt—your kind aunt—will see you into the train and I will meet you at the terminus, and then, heigho! for a new life!"

I could not help laughing with glee, and then I was sorry, for Aunt Penelope had been as kind as kind could be after her fashion, and I did wrong not to feel some regret at leaving her. But when a girl has only her father, and that father has been away for ten long years, surely she is to be excused for wishing to be with him again.

Aunt Penelope hardly spoke at all after my father left. What her thoughts were I could not define; I am afraid, too, I did not try to guess them. But early next morning she began to make preparations for my departure. The little trunks which had accompanied me to Hill View were placed in the centre of my room, and Aunt Penelope put my very modest wardrobe into them. She laid between my nice, 

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