had never allowed of his bringing your messages.'

'Who set him down in the kitchen to drink a cup of beer?' said Louis,
mischievously.

'Ah! well! one comfort is, that girls never care for boys of the same
age,' replied Aunt Catharine, as she turned the key, and admitted
them into No. 7; when Fitzjocelyn confused Mary's judgment with his
recommendations, till Aunt Catharine pointing out the broken shutter,
and asking if he would not have been better employed in fetching the
carpenter, than in hectoring the magistrates, he promised to make up
for it, fetched a piece of wood and James's tools, and was quickly at
work, his Aunt only warning him, that if he lost Jem's tools she
would not say it was her fault.

By the time Mary's imagination had portrayed what paper, paint,
furniture, and habitation might make the house, and had discerned how
to arrange a pretty little study in case of her father's return; he
had completed the repair in a workmanlike manner, and putting two
fingers to his cap, asked, 'Any other little job for me, ma'am?'

Of course, he forgot the tools, till shamed by Mary's turning back
for them, and after a merry luncheon, served up in haste by Jane,
they betook themselves to Number 8, where the Miss Faithfulls were
seated at a dessert of hard biscuits and water, of neither of which
they ever partook: they only adhered to the hereditary institution of
sitting for twenty minutes after dinner with their red and purple
doileys before them.

Mary seemed to herself carried back fourteen years, and to understand