Little Miss Amy had a slight cold, and the next tea-party was put off for a day. On the evening following Harry’s visit at Stanlake Farm, Marjory Trevellian being at that time absent in the village to make some frugal purchases, who should suddenly appear before the little boy’s eyes, as he lifted them from his fleet upon the pond, but his friend, Tom Orange, as usual in high and delightful spirits.

Need I say how welcome Tom was? He asked in a minute or two for Marjory, and took her temporary absence with great good-humour. Tom affected chilliness, and indeed the evening was a little sharp, and proposed that they should retire to the cottage, and sit down there.

“How soon do you suppose, youngster, the-old hen will come home?”

“Who?”

“Marjory Daw, down the chimney.”

“Oh, Granny!”

This nickname was the only pleasantry of Mr. Orange which did not quite please the boy.

Tom Orange here interpolated his performance of the jackdaw, with his eyelids turned inside out and the pupils quivering, which, although it may possibly have resembled the jackdaw of heraldry, was not an exact portraiture of the bird familiar to us in natural history; and when this was over he asked again—“How soon will she be home?”

“She walked down to the town, and I think she can’t be more than about half-way back again.”

“That’s a mile, and three miles au hour is the best of her paces if she was runnin’ for a pound o’ sausages and a new cap.

Heigh ho! and alas and alack—a—day. No one at home but the maid, and the maid’s gone to church! I wrote her a letter the day before yesterday, and I must read it again before she comes back. Where does she keep her letters? ”

“In her work-box on the shelf.”

“This will be it, the wery identical fiddle!” said Tom Orange, playfully, setting it down upon the little deal table, and, opening it, he took out the little sheaf of letters from the end, and took them one by one to the window, where he took the liberty of reading them.

I think he was disappointed, for he pitched them back again into their nook in the little trunk-shaped box contemptuously.

The boy regarded Tom Orange as a friend of the family so confidential, and as a man in all respects so admirable and virtuous, that nothing appeared more desirable and natural than that excellent person’s giving his attention to the domestic correspondence.

He popped the box back again in its berth.

Then he treated the young gentleman to Lingo’s song with the rag-tag-merry-derry perrywig and hatband, &c., and at the conclusion of the performance admitted that he was “dry,” and with a pleasant wink, and the tip of his finger pushing the end of his nose a good deal to the left, he asked him whether he could tell him where Mrs. Trevellian, who would be deeply grieved if she thought t............