"Do you mean," said Christie, with glistening eyes and awful
deliberation--"do you mean to say that we're expected to fall in with
this insufferable familiarity? I suppose they'll be calling US by our
Christian names next."

"Oh, but they do!" said Jessie, mischievously.

"What!"

"They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one, asked me if
Christie played."

"And what did you say?"

"I said that you did," answered Jessie, with an affectation of cherubic
simplicity. "You do, dear; don't you? . . . There, don't get angry,
darling; I couldn't flare up all of a sudden in the face of that poor
little creature; he looked so absurd--and so--so honest."

Christie turned away, relapsing into her old resigned manner, and
assuming her household duties in a quiet, temporizing way that was,
however, without hope or expectation.

Mr. Carr, who had dined with his friends under the excuse of not adding
to the awkwardness of the first day's housekeeping returned late at
night with a mass of papers and drawings, into which he afterwards
withdrew, but not until he had delivered himself of a mysterious package
entrusted to him by the young men for his daughters. It contained a
contribution to their board in the shape of a silver spoon and battered