But Mrs. Drummond was not to be put off so easily. She left her seat, where she had been sewing as usual, and came and stood beside him a moment. He would have jumped up and given her his own chair, but she pressed his shoulder gently, as though to forbid the movement.

"I like to stand, Archie. Yes, it is a lovely evening; but I think you ought to ask Grace, and not your father, to accompany you. Grace was always your companion, you know, and you must not drop old habits too suddenly." Then Archie saw that his avoidance of Grace had been marked.

"Very well, I will ask her," he returned; but he showed none of his old alacrity and spirit in claiming his favorite.

Mrs. Drummond noticed this; and the shade of anxiety on her face grew deeper.

"Archie, you are not quite your old self with Grace; and I am sure she feels it. What has come between you, my dear?"

"Why, nothing, mother;" and here he attempted a laugh. "Grace and I never quarrel, as you know."

"I was not speaking of quarrelling," she returned, in a graver voice; "but you do not seek her out as you used. Before, when you arrived, you always disappointed me by shutting yourself up in the school-room, where no one could get at you; and now Grace tells me she has not had a word with you these four days."

"Has Grace complained of me, then?"

"You know Grace never complains of you. It was not said in any fault-finding way. We agreed you were not quite yourself, or in your usual spirits; and I asked her the reason. Tell me, my son, is there anything troubling you?" Archie sat silent. Mrs. Drummond was so rarely demonstrative to her children that even this well-beloved son had never heard before such chords of tenderness in his mother's voice; and, looking up, he saw that her keen gray eyes were softened and moist with tears. "You are not quite yourself, Archie,--not quite happy?" she went on.

Then he took counsel with himself; and after a moment he answered her:

"No, mother; you are right. I am not--not quite myself nor quite happy; but I mean to be both presently." And then he looked up in her face pleadingly, with an expression of entreaty that went to her heart, and continued: "But my own mother will not pain me by unnecessary questions that I could not answer." And then she knew that his will was that she should be silent.

"Very well," she returned, with a sigh. "But you will tell me one thing, will you not, my dear! Is it--is it quite hopeless?" her mother's instinct, like that of the Eastern Caliph, immediately suggesting a woman in the case.

"Quite--quite hopeless!--as dead as this!" bringing down his hand on a large defunct moth. "Talking will not bring to life, or help a man, to carry a real burden."

Then, as she kissed him, she knew that his pain had been very great, but that he meant to bear it with all the strength he could bring.

Grace went up to prepare for her walk that evening with no very pleasurable antic.i.p.ations. Her mother had given her Archie's message in due form, as she sat somewhat sadly by the school-room window, mending a frock Dottie had just torn.

"Archie wants you to go out with him, Grace," Mrs. Drummond said, as she came in, in her usual active bustling way. "The gra.s.s never grew under her feet," as she was often pleased to observe. "Loitering and lagging make young bones grow prematurely old," she would say, coining a new proverb for the benefit of lazy Susie. "Never measure your footsteps when you are about other people's business," she would say to Laura, who hated to be hunted up from her employment for any errand. "He thinks of going over to Blackthorn Farm, as it is so fine; and the walk will do you good," continued Mrs. Drummond, with a keen look at her daughter's pale face. "Give me Dottie's frock: that little monkey is always getting into mischief." But Grace yielded her task reluctantly.

"Are you sure he wishes me to go, mother?"

"Quite sure," was the brief answer; but she added no more.

Silence was ever golden to this busy, hard-working mother. She was generally sparing of words. Grace, who saw that her mother was bent on her going, made no further demur; but, as she put on her walking-things, she told herself that Archie was only making a virtue of necessity. He was so little eager for her society that he had not sought her himself, but had sent her a message. Ever since his return, no light-springing footsteps had been heard on the uncarpeted stairs leading to the school-room. He had forsaken their old haunt, where they had once talked so happily, sitting hand in hand on the old window-seat.

Grace felt herself grievously wounded. For months a barrier had been between her and Archie. He had written seldom; and his letters, when they came, told her nothing. In manner he was kindness itself. That there was no change in his affection was evident; but the key to his confidence was mislaid. He had withdrawn himself into some inner citadel, where he seemed all at once inaccessible, and her sisterly soul was vexed within her.

He met her at the door with his usual smile of welcome.

"That is right, Grace; you have not kept me long waiting," he said, pleasantly, as she came towards him; and then, as they walked down Lowder Street, he commenced talking at once. He had so much to tell her, he said; and here Grace's pulses began to throb expectantly; but the eager light died out of her face when he went on to detail a long conversation he had had with his mother the previous night. Was that all? she thought. Was the longed-for confidence still to be withheld?

Archie did not seem to notice her silence: he rattled on volubly.

"I think we were hard on the mother, Gracie, you and I," he said.

"After all, I believe she was right in not giving us our own way in the spring."

"I am glad you think so," replied Grace, coldly. Archie winced at her tone, but recovered himself, and went on gayly:

"It does one good sometimes to have one's wishes crossed; and, after all, it was only fair that poor Mattie, being the eldest, should have her turn. She does her best, poor little soul! and, though I find her terribly trying sometimes, I can hold out pretty patiently until Christmas; and then mother herself suggested that you should take her place at the vicarage."

"I! oh, no, Archie!" And here the color flushed over Gracie's face, and her eyes filled with tears. The news was so unexpected,--so overwhelming. Another time the sweetness of it would have filled her with rapture. But now! "Oh, no, no!" she cried, in so vehement a tone that her brother turned in surprise, and something of her meaning came home to him.

"Wait a moment," he said, deprecatingly. "I have not finished yet what I want to say. Mother said Mattie was greatly improved by her visit, and that she was infinitely obliged to me for yielding to her wish.

She told me plainly that it was impossible to have spared you before,--that you were her right hand with the girls, and that even now your loss would be great."

"I do not mean to leave mother," returned Grace, in a choked voice.

"Not if I want you and ask you to come?" he replied, with reproachful tenderness, "Why, Grace, what has become of our old compact?"

"You do not need me now," she faltered, hardly able to speak without weeping.

"We will talk of that by and by," was the somewhat impatient answer.

"Just at this minute I want to tell you all the mother said on the subject. Facts before feelings, please," with a touch of sarcasm; but he pointed it with a smile. "You see, Grace, Isabel's marriage makes a difference. There is one girl off my father's hands. And then the boys are doing so well. Mother thinks that in another three months Clara may leave the school-room; she will be seventeen then, and, as Ellis has promised her a course of music-lessons, to develop her one talent, you may consider her off your hands."

"Clara will never do me credit," returned his sister, mournfully: "she works steadily and takes pains, but she was never as clever as Isabel."

"No; she is no shining light, as mother owns; but she will play beautifully, if she be properly trained. Well, as to the other girls, it appears that my father has decided to accept my offer of sending Susie to a first-cla.s.s boarding-school; and, as he has determined to do the same for Laura, there is only Dottie for Mattie to manage or mismanage. So you see, Gracie, your school-room drudgery is over.

Mother herself, by her own will, has opened the prison-doors."

He spoke in a light jesting tone, but Grace answered, almost pa.s.sionately,--

"I tell you no, Archie! I no longer wish it so; it is too late: things are now quite different."

"What do you mean?" he returned, with a long steady look that seemed to draw out her words in spite of her resolve not to speak them.

"I mean that things are changed--that you no longer need me, or wish me to live with you."

"I need you more," he returned, calmly; "perhaps I have never needed you so much. As for living with me, is it your desire to condemn me to an existence of perfect loneliness?--for after Christmas Mattie leaves me. You are mysterious, Grace; you are not your old self."

"Oh, it is you that are not yourself!" she retorted, in a tone of grief. "Why have you avoided me? why do you withhold your confidence?

why do your letters tell me nothing? and then you come and are still silent."

"What is it that you would have me tell you?" he asked; but this time he did not look her in the face.

"I would know this thing that has come between us and robbed me of your confidence. You are ill at ease; you are unhappy, Archie! You have never kept a trouble from me before: it was always I who shared your hopes and fears."

"You may still share them. I am not changed, as you imagine Grace. All that I can tell you I will, even if you demand it in that 'money-or-your-life' style, as you are doing now," trying to turn it off with a jest.

"Oh, Archie!"

"Well, what of Archie, now?"

"That you should laugh away my words! you have never done that before."

"Very well, I will be serious; nay, more, I will be solemn. Grace, I forbid you ever to mention this thing again, on pain of my bitter displeasure!"