met.

"Would you like to see England, my little fellow?" he inquired of Ned.

"Oh, very much! more than anything else in the world," replied the boy,
his eyes gleaming and his cheeks flushing with the earnestness of his
response; for, indeed, the question stirred up all the dreams and
reveries which the child had cherished, far back into the dim regions
of his memory. After what the Doctor had told him of his origin, he had
never felt any home feeling here; it seemed to him that he was
wandering Ned, whom the wind had blown from afar. Somehow or other,
from many circumstances which he put together and seethed in his own
childish imagination, it seemed to him that he was to go back to that
far old country, and there wander among the green, ivy-grown, venerable
scenes; the older he grew, the more his mind took depth, the stronger
was this fancy in him; though even to Elsie he had scarcely breathed
it.

"So strong a desire," said the stranger, smiling at his earnestness,
"will be sure to work out its own accomplishment. I shall meet you in
England, my young friend, one day or another. And you, my little girl,
are you as anxious to see England as your brother?"

"Ned is not my brother," said little Elsie.

The Doctor here interposed some remark on a different subject; for it
was observable that he never liked to have the conversation turn on
these children, their parentage, or relations to each other or himself.

The children were sent to bed; and the young Englishman, finding the