Master Francis was still writing busily when I went back to the nursery. He looked pale and tired, and once or twice I heard him sigh. I knew it was not good for him to be stooping so long over his lessons, especially as the children had not been out all that day.

'Really,' I said, half to myself, but his ears were quick and he heard me, 'Miss Bess has done nothing but mischief this afternoon. I feel sometimes as if I couldn't manage her.'

The boy looked up quickly.

'O nurse!' he said, 'please don't speak like that. I mean I wouldn't for anything have uncle or auntie think I had put her out, or that there had been any trouble. It just comes over her sometimes like that, and she's very sorry afterwards. I suppose Lally and I haven't spirits enough for her, she is so clever and bright, and it must be dull for her, now and then.'

'I'm sure, Master Francis, my dear,' I said, 'no one could be kinder and nicer with Miss Bess than you; and as for cleverness, she may be quick and bright, but I'd like to know where she'd be for her lessons but for you helping her many a time.'

I was still feeling a bit provoked with Miss Bess, I must allow.

'I'm nearly three years older, you know,' replied Master Francis, though all the same I could see a pleased look on his face. It wasn't that he cared for praise—boy or man, I have never in my life known any human being so out and out humble as Mr. Francis; it's that that gives him his wonderful power over others, I've often thought,—but he did love to think he was of the least use to any of those he was so devoted to.

'I'm so glad to help her,' he said softly. 'Nurse,' he added after a little silence, 'I do feel so sad about things sometimes. If I had been big and strong, I might have looked forward to doing all sorts of things for them all, but now I often feel I can never be anything but a trouble, and such an expense to uncle and aunt. You really don't know what my leg costs,' he added in a way that made me inclined both to laugh and cry at once.

'Dear Master Francis,' I said, 'you shouldn't take it so.' I should have liked to say more, but I felt I could scarcely do so without hinting at blame where I had no right to do so.

He didn't seem to notice me.

'If it had to be,' he went on in the same voice, 'why couldn't I have been a girl, or why couldn't one of them have been a boy? That would have stopped it being quite so bad for poor auntie.'

'Whys and wherefores are not for us to answer, my dear, though things often clear themselves up when least expected,' I said. 'And now I must see what Miss Bess is after, that's to say if you've got your writing finished.'

'It's just about done,' he said, 'and I'm sure Bess won't tease any more. Do fetch her in, nurse. Why, baby! what is it, my pet?' he added, for there was Miss Augusta standing beside him, having deserted her toys on the hearthrug. For, though without understanding anything we had been saying, she had noticed the melancholy tone of her cousin's voice.

'Poor F'ancie,' she said pitifully. 'So tired, Baby wants to kiss thoo.'

'Poor F'ancie,' she said pitifully. 'So tired, Baby wants to kiss thoo.'

The boy picked her up in his arms, and I saw the fair shaggy head and fat dimpled cheeks clasped close and near to his thin white face, and if there were tears in Master Francis's eyes I am sure it wasn't anything to be ashamed of. Never was a braver spirit, and no one that knows him now could think him less a hero could they look back over the whole of his life.

I found Miss Bess sitting quietly with the pincushion on her lap, by the window, making patterns with the pins, apparently quite content. She had not been crying, indeed it took a great deal to get a tear from that child, she had such a spirit of her own. Still she was sorry for what she had done, and she bore no malice, that I could see by the clear look in her pretty eyes as she glanced up at me.

'Nurse,' she said, though more with the air of a little queen granting a favour than a tiresome child asking to be forgiven, 'I'm not going to tease any more. It's gone now, and I'm going to be good. I'm very sorry for making Lally cry, though she is a little silly—of course I wouldn't care to do it if she wasn't,—and I'm dreadfully sorry for poor old Franz's exercise. Look what I have been doing to make me remember,' and I saw that she had marked the words 'Bess sorry' with the pins. 'If you leave it there for a few days, and just say "pincushion" if you see me beginning again, it'll remind me.'

It wasn't very easy for me to keep as grave as I wished, but I answered quietly—

'Very well, Miss Bess, I hope you'll keep to what you say,' and we went back, quite friendly again, to the other room.

Master Francis and she began settling what games they would play, and I took the opportunity of slipping upstairs to the attic to call Miss Lally down. She came running out, as bright as could be, and gave me her knitting to hide away for her.

'Nursie,' she said, 'I really think there's good fairies in the attic. I've got on so well. Four whole rows all round and none stitches dropped.'

So that rainy day ended more cheerfully than it had begun.

Unluckily, however, the worst of the mischief caused by Miss Bess's heedlessness didn't show for some little time to come. The next Latin lesson passed off by all accounts very well, especially for Miss Bess. For, thanks to her new resolutions, she was in a most biddable mood, and quite ready to take her cousin's advice as to learning her list of words again, giving up half an hour of her playtime on purpose.

She came dancing upstairs in the highest spirits.

'Nursie,' she said,—and when she called me so I knew I was in high favour,—'I'm getting so good, I'm quite frightened at myself. Papa said I had never known my lessons so well.'

'I am very glad, I am sure, my love; and I hope,' I couldn't help adding, 'that Master Francis got some of the praise of it.'

For Master Francis was following her into the room, looking not quite so joyful. Miss Bess seemed a little taken aback.

'Do you know,' she said, 'I never thought of it. I was so pleased at being praised.' And as the child was honesty itself, I was certain it was just as she said.

'I'll run down now,' she went on, 'and tell papa that it was Franz who helped me.'

'No, please don't,' said the boy, catching hold of her. 'I am as pleased as I can be, Bess, that you got praised, and it's harder for you than for me, or even for Lally, to try hard at lessons, for you've always got such a lot of other things taking you up; and I wouldn't like,' he added slowly, 'for uncle to think I wanted to be praised. You see I'm older than you.'

'I'm sure you don't get too much praise ever, poor Franz!' said Miss Bess. 'Your exercise was as neat as neat, and yet papa wasn't pleased with it.'

Then I understood better why Master Francis looked a little sad.

'It was the one I had to copy over,' he said.

All the same he wouldn't let Miss Bess go down to her papa. Sir Hulbert was busy, he knew; he had several letters to write, he had heard him say, so Miss Bess had to give in.

'I'll tell you what it is,' she said. 'People who are generally rather naughty, like me,'—Miss Bess was in a humble mood!—'get made a great fuss about when they're good. But people who are always good, like Franz, never get any praise for it, and if ever they do the least bit wrong, they are far worse scolded.'

This made Master Francis laugh. It was something, as Miss Bess said, among the children themselves. Miss Lally, who was always loving and gentle to her cousin, he just counted upon in a quiet steady sort of way. But a word of approval from flighty Miss Bess would set him up as if she'd been the Queen herself.

That was a Friday. The next Latin day was Tuesday. Of course I don't know much about such things myself, but the lessons were taken in turns. One day they'd words and writing exercises out of a book on purpose, and another day they'd have regular Latin grammar, out of a thick old book, which had been Sir Hulbert's own when he was a boy, and which he thought a great deal of. Lesson-books were still expensive too, and even in small things money was considered at Treluan. It was on that Tuesday then that, to my distress, I saw that Master Francis had been crying when he came back to the nursery. It was the first time I had seen his eyes red, and he had been trying to make them right again, I'm sure, for he hadn't come straight up from the library. Miss Bess was not with him; it was a fine day and she had gone out driving with her mamma, having been dressed all ready and her lesson shortened for once on purpose.

I didn't seem to notice Master Francis, sorry though I felt, but Miss Lally burst out at once.

'Francie, darling,' she said, running up to him and throwing her arms round him. 'What's the matter? It isn't your leg, is it?'

'I wouldn't mind that, you know, Lally,' he said.

'But sometimes, when the pain's been dreadful bad, it squeezes the tears out, and you can't help it,' she said.

'No,' he answered, 'it isn't my leg. I think I'd better not tell you, Lally, for you might tell it to Bess, and I just won't have her know. Everything's been so nice with her lately, and it just would seem as if I'd got her into trouble.'

'Was papa vexed with you for something?' the child went on. 'You'd better tell me, Francie, I really won't tell Bess if you don't want me, and I'm sure nursie won't. I'm becustomed to keeping secrets now. Sometimes secrets are quite right, nursie says.'

I could scarcely help smiling at her funny little air.

'It wasn't anything very much, after all,' said Master Francis. 'It was only that uncle said——,' and here his voice quivered and he stopped short.

'Tell it from the beginning,' said Miss Lally in her motherly way, 'and then when you get up to the bad part it won't seem so hard to tell.'

It was a relief to him to have her sympathy, I could see, and I think he cared a little for mine too.

'Well,' he began, 'it's all about that Latin grammar—no, not the lesson,' seeing that Miss Lally was going to interrupt him, 'but the book. Uncle's fat old Latin grammar, you know, Lally. We didn't use it last Friday, it wasn't the day, and we hadn't needed to look at it ourselves since last Wednesday—that was the ink-spilling day. So it was not found out till to-day; and—and uncle was—so—so vexed when he saw how spoilt it was, and the worst of it was I began something about it having been Bess, and that she hadn't told me, and that made uncle much worse——.' Here Master Francis stopped, he seemed on the point of crying again, and he was a boy to feel very ashamed of tears, as I have said.

'I don't think Miss Bess could have known the book had got inked,' I said. 'And I scarce see how it happened, unless the ink got spilt on the table, and it may have been lying open—I've seen Miss Bess fling her books down open on their faces, so to speak, many a time,—and it may have dried in and been shut up when all the books were cleared away, and no one noticed.'

'Yes,' said Master Francis eagerly, 'that's how it must have been. I never meant that Bess had done it and hidden it. I said it in a hurry because I was so sorry for uncle to think I hadn't taken care of his book, and I was very sorry about the book too. But I made it far worse. Uncle said it was mean of me to try to put my carelessness upon another, a younger child, and a girl; O Lally! you never heard him speak like that; it was dreadful.'

'Was it worse than that time when big Jem put the blame on little Pat about the dogs not being fed?' asked Miss Lally very solemnly.

Master Francis flushed all over.

'You needn't have said that, Lally,' he said turning away. 'I'm not so bad as that, any way.'

It was very seldom he spoke in that voice to Miss Lally, and she hadn't meant to vex him, poor child, though her speech had been a mistake.

'Come, come, Master Francis,' I said, 'you're taking the whole thing too much to heart, I think. Perhaps Sir Hulbert was worried this morning.'

'No, no,' said Master Francis, 'he spoke quite quietly. A sort of cold, kind way, that's much worse than scolding. He said whatever Bess's faults were, she was quite, quite open and honest, and of course I know she is; but he said that this sort of thing made him a little afraid that my being delicate and not—not like other boys, was spoiling me, and that I must never try to make up for not being strong and manly by getting into mean and cunning ways to defend myself.'

Young as she was, Miss Lally quite understood; she quite forgot all about his having been vexed with her a moment before.

'O Francie!' she cried, running to him and flinging her arms round him, in a way she sometimes did, as if he needed her protection; 'how could papa say so to you? Nobody could think you mean or cunning. It's only that you're too good. I'll tell Bess as soon as she comes in, and she'll tell papa all about it, then he'll see.'

'No, dear,' said Master Francis, 'that's just what you mustn't do. Don't you remember you promised?'

Miss Lally's face fell.

'Don't you see,' Master Francis went on, 'that would look mean? As if I had made Bess tell on herself to put the blame off me. And I do want everything to be happy with Bess and me ourselves as long as I am here. It won't be for so very long,' he added. 'Uncle says it will be a very good thing indeed for me to go to school.'

This was too much for Miss Lally, she burst out crying, and hugged Master Francis tighter than before. I had got to understand more of her ways by now, and I knew that once she was started on a regular sobbing fit, it soon got beyond her own power to stop. So I whispered to Master Francis that he must help to cheer her up, and between us we managed to calm her down. That was just one of the things so nice about the dear boy, he was always ready to forget about himself if there was anything to do for another.

Miss Bess came back from her drive brimming over with spirits, and though it would have been wrong to bear her any grudge, it vexed me rather to see the other two so pale and extra quiet, though Master Francis did his best, I will say, to seem as cheerful as usual.

Miss Bess's quick eyes soon saw there had been something amiss. But I passed it off by saying Miss Lally had been troubled about something, but we weren't going to think about it any more.

Think about it I did, however, so far as it concerned Master Francis, especially. Till now I had been always pleased to see that his uncle was really much attached to the boy, and ready to do him justice. But this notion, which seemed to have begun in Sir Hulbert's mind, that just because the poor child was delicate and in a sense infirm, he must be mean spirited and unmanly in mind, seemed to me a very sad one, and likely to bring much unhappiness. Nor could I feel sure that my lady was not to blame for it. She was frank and generous herself, but inclined to take up prejudices, and not always careful enough in her way of speaking of those she had any feeling against.

I did what I could, whenever I had any opportunity, to stand up for the boy in a quiet way, and with all respect to those who were his natural guardians. But, on the whole, much as I knew we should miss him in the nursery, I was scarcely sorry to hear not many weeks after the little events I have been telling about, that Master Francis's going to school was decided upon. It was to be immediately after the Christmas holidays, and we were now in the month of October.