"Didn't know, Miss, whether the doctor had gone. Been a-cleaning his boots. Look, Miss, there's a shine!"

"Yes, yes, Bob, they look very nice. Take them, up-stairs, and then come and clear away."

"All right, Miss. I made a whole bottle o' blacking outer half a cake as a chap I knows give me."

"Yes, yes, Bob."

"Stunning blacking it is, too. He's in the Brigade, and I minded his box for him, and took sixpence while he went and had a game of marbles.

That's why he give me the cake."

"Now, Bob, my good lad, I don't want to know anything about that. Take those boots up-stairs."

"All right, Miss; but do look how they shines. I polished tops and all.

Look, Miss."

"Yes, yes, yes; they are beautifully clean."

"I allus thinks about legs, Miss, when I cleans boots; and when I thinks about legs, I think about the doctor making such a good job o' mine arter I was run over. It's stronger than the other; I am glad as it was broke."

"Glad?"

"Yes, Miss. Why, if I hadn't been run over, my leg wouldn't have been broke, and then the doctor wouldn't have mended it, and I shouldn't be here. What's she gone away for?" said the boy to himself, as he stared after Richmond. "She's been a-crying; one of her eyes was wet. What cowards gals are to cry!"

The boy went to the door and listened, but all was perfectly still; so he set down the boots, rolled his apron into what he called a cow's tail, the process consisting in twisting it up very tightly and tucking it round his waist.

This done he listened again, and finding all still, he thrust his arms into the doctor's boots and indulged in a hearty laugh of a silently weird description before going down on all fours, and walking as slowly and solemnly round the table as a tom cat, whose movements he accurately copied, rubbing himself up against the legs of the table, and purring loudly.

This over, he rose to his feet and listened, but all being still, he went down upon all fours again and trotted round the table, leaped on to a chair, leaped down again, and ran out of the room and along the dark passage towards the head of the kitchen stairs, looking in the gloom wonderfully like some large ape.

Active as he was, a descent of the dark stone stairs on all fours was beyond him; so he rose up, and reaching over, glided silently down the balustrade, to the great detriment of his buttons. But, arrived upon the mat at the bottom, he once more resumed his quadrupedal attitude, thrust his hands well into the Wellington boots, and trotted with a soft patter into a dark back kitchen, out of which came a droning noise uttered by some one at work, and apparently under the impression that it was a song.

The boy, more animal-like than ever, disappeared in the gloom, with the boots making a low _pat-pat, pat-pat_, and then there was a loud shriek, and Bob bounded out, skimmed up the stairs, after evidently having alarmed some one, and disappeared with the boots, which he sedately carried up to the bedroom. Then he descended, to listen at the head of the stairs to a complaining voice relating to Richmond Chartley an account of how an "ormuz" great dog had come down the area, run into the back kitchen, and frighted some one almost out of her wits!

Bob's face expressed happiness approaching the sublime, and he hurriedly cleared the breakfast-things, and took them down in time to be sent down by a not over-clean-looking maid-of-all-work to shut that there gate.

The boy was in the act of performing this duty when a neatly-dressed girlish-looking body approached, carrying a large folio under one arm--a folio so bound that the neatly-mended and well-fitting little glove which covered a very small hand could hardly reach to the bottom.

"Is your mistress in?"

"Yes, Miss," said Bob, whose face seemed to reflect the sweet, sunny smile which greeted him. "I'll slip round and let you in."

"Oh!"

This was the utterance of the new arrival, as she saw the boy apparently hurl himself over the iron balustrade of the area-steps, and plunge into the dust-hole region beyond. But Bob had long practiced the keeping of his equilibrium, as the polished slat of the iron rail proved, and, instead of dashing out his brains on the stones, he reached the bottom with a bound, and diving into the house, reappeared in a marvellously short space of time at the front-door.

"She's in the dining-room, Miss," said Bob, making a rush at the folio, and feasting his eyes the while on the natty fur-trimmed jacket and little furry hat, whose hue harmonised admirably with the wavy dark brown hair, neatly braided up beneath; for the visitor was remarkably well-dressed, and her fresh young face set off everything so well that no one thought of noticing that the dress had been turned, and that the jacket's rough exterior had certainly last winter been upon the other side.

Bob hurriedly closed the door, and ran into the chilly dining-room with the folio, which he banged down on the table with--

"Here's Miss Heath, Miss;" and then darted out of the room, leaving the two girls face to face. "They don't like me to see 'em cuddling," he said with a grin; and, urged by the enormous amount of vitality that was in him, Bob bounded to the kitchen stairs to slide down, and, directly after, a gritty rubbing noise, made metrical to accompany the shrill whistling of a tune, arose, the result of the fact that Bob Hartnup, the doctor's boy, who clung to the house with the fidelity of a cat, was cleaning the knives. Bob's facts were correct, if unrefined in expression, for the two girls flew to each other's arms, and as they kissed affectionately, each displayed tears in her eyes, while without relinquishing hands, they sat down together near the window.

"No news, Janet?" whispered Richmond. Her visitor shook her head slowly, gazing wistfully the while into her companion's eyes.

"We must wait, Rich dear. Africa is a horribly great place, and some day we shall hear that he is coming back."

Richmond Chartley made no reply, but sat gazing straight out through the uncleaned window, as if her large clear eyes were looking straight away over the ocean in search of the man she loved.

"Don't, don't, darling; don't look like that," whispered the younger girl. "Don't think all that again. It's cruel, it's wicked of them to have said such things. He was too young, and strong, and brave to die."

"Please God, yes!" said Richmond simply, but with a deep heart-stirring pathos in the tones of her rich voice.

"And one of these days he'll come, dear, like the good prince in the fairy tale, all rich and handsome, as my darling brother always was, and marry my own dear Rich, and make her happy again."

"Please God, yes!" said Richmond once more; and this time there was resignation, and despair so plainly marked that her companion flung her arms about her neck and began to sob.

"Rich, dear Rich, don't, pray don't, or you'll drive me half mad. I've all my lessons to give to-day. And my hand will tremble, and I shall be so unnerved that I can do nothing."

"Janet dear, I try so hard not to despair, but the weary months roll by, and it is two years now since you have had a line."

"Yes, but what of that? Perhaps he is where there are no post-offices, or perhaps he is not getting on; and, poor boy, he is too proud to write till he is doing better. Why, he has only been away four years."

"Four years!" said Richmond sadly; "is it only four years?"

"That's all, dear, though it has seemed like eight, and we will not despair, even though it is so hard to bear. Why, Rich, I feel sometimes when I kneel down at night that if he were dead I should know it; he would not let us go on suffering if it were so."

"Janet dear, I feel sometimes as if it was wrong to have loved him."

"What, dear Mark?"

"Yes."

"Wrong? For shame! How could any girl who knew my darling old Mark as you did help loving him?"

"But it made him dissatisfied. I was the cause of his going away."

"That foolish thought again! You were not, dear. It would have been the same if he had loved any girl. He said that he would not ask any woman to be his wife while he was tied down here without any prospects; and he went off to make his fortune, as many another brave young Englishman has gone before."

"But I made him discontented, dear."

"You made him behave nobly. Why, what other man would have said as he did, 'I hold you to no engagement. I ask nothing of you: I only tell you that I love you with all my heart'?"

"'And some day I will return,'" said Richmond, in a low deep voice.

"Yes, and some day he will return, dear: I do believe it, I _will_ believe it, and--Oh, Rich, Rich, Rich, why, why are we such unhappy girls?"

It was the elder's turn now to try and comfort the younger, who had burst into a passionate fit of weeping, so full of anguish that, at last, Richmond raised her friend's hand, kissed it, and holding the bonny little head between her hands, she said, with almost motherly tenderness.

"Janet, Hendon has been speaking to you again?"