"Won't you stay and drink a dish of tea,
sir?" asked my aunt, hospitably, though she
looked a little fluttered as Mr. Lee took her
hand and glared at her solemnly. He was not
intoxicated, but he had taken enough to make
him more prosy and pompous than usual.

"I thank you, madam, but 'tis a beverage I
never partake of, and we are pressed for time.
My horse and gig are awaiting us at the Blue
Bell, but I could not depart without expressing
my best thanks for your hospitality. Horace,
why do you not join your acknowledgments to
mine? I am surprised at your negligence."

"Oh, pray!" said poor aunt, quite earnestly,
"I'm sure there's no need, none in the world.
It's a great pleasure to us to have
entertained the young gentleman in our homely
fashion."

"But there is need, madam," persisted Mr.
Lee. "There is need; pardon me for
contradicting you, but I am a great stickler for the
observance of those polite forms which—which—
gild the wheels of life. Likewise, I was brought
up in the observance of the utmost courtesy,
especially towards the gentler sex. You may
deem me punctilious and over-precise, young man,
but in my day it was thought no part of good
manners to leave a lady's house without a parting
compliment. Courtesy, courtesy and
consideration for the fair sex, even in the most
trifling matters, has been my rule through
life."

I couldn't help thinking of the little scene at
the dining-room door, and I had an uncomfortable
idea that Mr. Horace was thinking of the
same thing, and I felt my cheeks grow provokingly
scarlet. Mr. Lee went on some time
longer, and made quite a speech, which,
however, seemed to be spoken rather at us than to
his son; but at last it came to an end, and he
took a dignified leave of me, and an admiring
one of Anna, paying her several high-flown
compliments, which she received very graciously
and with much self-possession. Horace made
each of us his stiff little bow. I fancy his father's
paternal admonition had not tended to put him
more at his ease. But no bashfulness could
have helped thawing under the influence of
Aunt Gough's genial motherly manner, and the
young man took her hand, and bade her
farewell, quite cordially.

"I hope we shall see you at the Gable House
very often," we heard my uncle saying, as he
accompanied his guests down-stairs. "You'll
be a neighbour, you know, Mr. Horace. If
you can put up with humdrum old-fashioned
folks like us, you will always find a warm
welcome and a cool tankard."

I have been sure since, that old Mr. Lee had
accosted my uncle that market-day, and
introduced his son to him, expressly that he might
receive some such invitation, and secure a
footing in the Gable household. I know
not if he had any further plan in his mind
at that time; but it was of itself no trifling
advantage to a new comer in Willborough
to be known as a welcome guest at the Gable
House: an advantage which the baronet's
steward was very sensible of, notwithstanding
his boasts about his good connexion. We had
never been honoured by so much of Mr. Lee's
company before that day, and I think we were
all tacitly agreed that it was a luxury we should
not care to indulge in very often. But my
uncle had taken a liking to the son, and said
over and over again, "He's a nice lad. A well-
looking lad, and well-mannered, though he's
strange among us as yet. But where in the
world he gets his shyness from, the Lord knows!
His mother must have been a gentle creature.
I never knew her; but he looks like a lad who
has had a nice mother."

The autumn days grew shorter and shorter,
the faint smell of dead leaves was in the air,
and the pale evening sky, pricked here and
there with a spark of tremulous lustre, began
to show the delicate tracery of leafless boughs
relieved against its faint western yellow. By
that time, Horace Lee was as familiar an
apparition beneath my uncle's roof as old Stock
himself. His shyness wore off as he grew
intimate with us, and we found him to be a most
pleasant companion, with a vein of almost boyish
fun and merriment which especially delighted my
uncle. A closer bond of good-fellowship between
them revealed itself accidentally. James Gough
was a north-countryman by birth and family. I
cannot now explain—if, indeed, I ever did rightly
know—what vicissitudes of fortune had brought
him to dwell in our southern county; but I
know he kept a warm corner in his heart for all
that belonged to his dear Border land, and
retained a clannish interest in his own far-away
kinsfolk, even to cousins thrice removed. And,
behold, one day it came out that Horace Lee's
mother had been a Northumbrian, born and
bred within twenty miles of my uncle's native
place! Here was a pleasant discovery! Uncle
Gough was never weary of questioning Horace
about his dead mother, and rubbing up his own
reminiscences of her family, the McNaghtens,
until he ended by persuading himself that he
must have known Mrs. Lee in early youth,
though I am afraid it was inexorably proved by
dates and figures that he could never have seen
her. He would sit and talk for hours of the
wild moorlands and the heathery solitudes he
had tramped through when a boy, relating one
adventure after another, until the northern burr
would come back to his tongue, and the boyish
sparkle into his eyes, and he would bid Anna
sing some old Border ballad, and would sit
listening with closed eyelids to her fresh thrilling
tones, while his heart lived over again the
days of auld lang syne, and the tears stole
unchecked down his dear honest face.

Horace, too, would listen, charmed and attentive.
Anna, who loved excitement and
admiration as much as most girls conscious of their
beauty, and accustomed to receive praise in no
stinted measure, never threw so much power
and pathos into her voice, or so much expression
into her changing face, as when Horace
varied the monotony of her home audience and