chucked away and lost the most scrumptious girl in all Clapham-your own daughter, too; the best house in the place, the best cellar of wine, and my society.'

Yes, yes,' Anthony replied; I know, I know.'

to us.

'There's still a door open. Come back I, for one, will never say a word to reproach you, or recall the past. Remember, uncle, there's always a knife and fork ready for you.'

CHAPTER VII.

HOW JACK BAKER PROPOSED AN AGREEABLE

COMPROMISE.

ALISON returned home with greater lightness of heart than she had felt since her father's death. It was far more to her than to other girls to have stood beside her mother's grave. She had received an assurance which would at once stay the hand of her enemy, and stop the tongues of those who maligned her father's memory; her lover was come back to her, and again the ring of engagement decorated the third finger of her left hand. Her pride, her self-respect, returned to her, and when she

ran up the steps of the old house it was with a step as elastic and a face as bright as any that had ever rejoiced the face of her father.

'Dear old house,' she cried,' I shall not have to leave you after all.'

Then,' said young Nick, who was there to welcome her, 'I suppose you have squared it at last with Uncle Stephen. A very sensible thing too. Mind, I always offered to square it for you, but you were so uncommonly taken up with that fellow Yorke. Now, I suppose, he's come round to my opinion, and pretends it is his own idea. What's the figure?'

'You are a horrid boy! Alison would tell him no more.

Said Nicolas, bursting into song,

'Let others wed for rings and things and pearls, 'Tis oh! a Writing-master's wife to be-ee-ee-ee ; A Writing-master's wife—or daughter-or female relation of some kind-to be.'

'You want the writing-master, Alison,

my dear?

he's coming.'

Wait a little-wait a little;

But she was not to be allured into asking any questions, even about the writingmaster. She was too happy to feel

curious.

Her manner excited the boy's liveliest curiosity. At dinner he listened for information, but none was given. After dinner he made haste to spread out all his volumes and dictionaries, and pretended rapt absorption in his studies, hoping that Alison. would be betrayed by his assumed concentration of thought into dropping some hint of what had happened.

She made no mention

But she did not. whatever of her

journey and its results. Only she was happy again, happy as a child; and Mrs. Cridland waited patiently to hear the cause. She was told, but not before her son went to bed.

Nicolas was greatly disgusted with this want of confidence; and next day, too, a half-holiday, when he might have told the secret to the writing-master. As it was, he contented himself with a letter in which he merely wrote these words:

'Something up. They've found it out, but they haven't told me yet. Keep up pecker.-N. C.'

They

The situation-had Mr. Bunter Baker realised what it meant was unpromising for him to reopen those negotiations which had already been entered upon. had, however, with one or two other matters, been greatly in his mind for some time. Stephen Hamblin, growing gloomy over the threatened delay, and perhaps suspicious about the movements of the other side, was dogged, and even violent, in his assertions of confidence.'

'I tell you,' said Jack, 'they've found out something. She went into the country the

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