Her father, a young clergyman, had died before she could remember
anything, and her mother had not survived him three months. Little
Kate had then become the charge of her mother's sister, Mrs. Wardour,
and had grown up in the little parsonage belonging to the district
church of St. James's, Oldburgh, amongst her cousins, calling Mr. and
Mrs. Wardour Papa and Mamma, and feeling no difference between their
love to their own five children and to her.

Mrs. Wardour had been dead for about four years, and the little girls
were taught by the eldest sister, Mary, who had been at a boarding-
school to fit her for educating them. Mr. Wardour too taught them a
good deal himself, and had the more time for them since Charlie, the
youngest boy, had gone every day to the grammar-school in the town.

Armyn, the eldest of the family, was with Mr. Brown, a very good old
solicitor, who, besides his office in Oldburgh, had a very pretty
house and grounds two miles beyond St. James's, where the parsonage
children were delighted to spend an afternoon now and then.

Little did they know that it was the taking the little niece as a
daughter that had made it needful to make Armyn enter on a profession
at once, instead of going to the university and becoming a clergyman
like his father; nor how cheerfully Armyn had agreed to do whatever
would best lighten his father's cares and troubles. They were a very
happy family; above all, on the Saturday evenings and Sundays that
the good-natured elder brother spent at home.

"There!" cried Sylvia, laying down her slate pencil, and indulging in
another tremendous yawn; "we can't do a thing more till Mary comes!
What can she be about?"