"Why?" asked Harold. And when I answered that the place was his and
I had no business there, he did not seem to see it. "It is your
home," he said; "you have always lived here."

I began explaining that this was no reason at all; but he would not
hear of my going away, and declared that it was I who belonged to the
place, so that I confessed that I should be very thankful to stay a
little while.

"Not only a little while," he said; "it is your home as much as ever,
and the best thing in the world for us."

"Yes, yes," responded Eustace; "we kept on wondering what Aunt Lucy
would be like, and never thought she could be such a nice _young_
lady."

"Not realising that your aunt is younger than yourselves," I said.

"No," said Eustace, "the old folk never would talk of home--my father
did not like it, you see--and Aunt Alice had moved off to New
Zealand, so that we could not go and talk about it to her. Mr. Smith
has got a school in Auckland, you know."

I did not know, but I found that a year or two after the death of my
brother Ambrose, his widow had become the second wife of the master
of a boarding-school at Sydney, and that it was there that Harold, at
ten years old, had fought all the boys, including the step-children,
and had been so audacious and uncontrollable, that she had been
forced to return him to his uncle and aunt in the "Bush." Eustace