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"He is a good young man, I believe," said Mrs. Copley, making so much of an admission as she and Dolly went upstairs.

"O mother," said Dolly, half laughing and half vexed, "you say that just because he has been entertaining you!"

"Well," returned Mrs. Copley. "I like to be entertained. Don't you find him entertaining?"

Mr. Shubrick kept up the same tactics for several days; behaving himself in the house very much as he had done ever since he had come to it. And out of the house, though he and Dolly took long walks and held long talks together; he was very cool and undemonstrative. He would let her get accustomed to him. And certainly in these conversations he was entertaining. Walking, or sitting on the bank under some old beech or oak tree, he had endless things to tell Dolly; things to which she listened as eagerly as ever Desdemona did to Othello; stories out of which, avoid personalities as he would, she could not but gain, step by step, new knowledge of the story-teller. And hour by hour Dolly's respect for him and appreciation of him grew. Little by little she found how thorough his education was, and how fine his accomplishments.

Especially as a draughtsman. Easily and often, in telling her of some place or of some naval engagement, Sandie would illustrate for her with any drawing materials that came to hand; making spirited and masterly sketches with a few strokes of his hand, it might be on paper, or on a bit of bark, or on the ground even.

"Ah," said Dolly one day, watching him, "I cannot do that! I can do something, but I cannot do that."

"What can you do?" inquired Sandie.

"I can copy. I can take down the lines of a face, or of a bridge, or a house, when I see it before me; but I cannot put things on paper out of my thoughts. Do you remember how you did this sort of thing for me the very first time I saw you?--in the gun deck of the 'Achilles'?"

He smiled, finishing the sketch he was about.

"I remember. I remember what pleasure it gave me, too. At that time I had a little sister, just your age, of whom I was exceedingly fond."

"At that time--you _had?_" Dolly repeated.

"Yes," he said soberly; "I have not anybody now, of near kin to me."

Dolly's hand with mute sympathy stole into his. It was the first action of approach to him that she had made, unless that coming to him in the park three or four days before might be reckoned in the bargain. He tossed his drawing into her lap and warmly clasped the hand.

"It is time you began to talk to me, Dolly," he said. "I have talked a great deal, but you have said next to nothing. You must have a great many questions to ask me."

"I don't know," said Dolly.

"Why, you know nothing about me," he said with a laughing look of his eyes. "You had better begin. You may ask me anything."

"But knowing a person and knowing _about_ him, are very different things."

"Very. And if you have the one sort of knowledge, it seems to me you must want to have the other. Unless, where both are alike uninteresting; which I cannot suppose is my case."

"No," said Dolly, laughing a little, "but I suppose you will tell me things by degrees, without my asking."

"What makes you suppose that?"

"It would be natural, wouldn't it?"

"_Would_ it be natural, without your showing any interest?"

"Ah, but now _you_ are supposing. Perhaps I should show interest."

Sandie laughed now heartily.

"I will try you," said he. "I will begin and tell you something without questions asked. Dolly, I have a house."

"Have you?"

"You do not care to hear about it?"

"I am glad that you have a house," said Dolly demurely. Sandie was lying on the turfy bank, in a convenient position for looking up into her eyes; and she found it not precisely an easy position for her.

"You do not take it as a matter of personal concern?"

"It is a house a long way off," said Dolly. "Just now we are here.''

"How much longer do you expect to be here?"

"That I do not know at all. Mother and I have tried and tried to get father to go home again,--and we cannot move him."

"I must try," said Mr. Shubrick.

"Oh, if you could!" said Dolly, clasping her hands unconsciously--"I don't know what I would give. He seems to mind you more than anybody."

"What keeps him here? Business?"

"I suppose it is partly business," said Dolly slowly, not knowing quite how to answer. And then darted into her heart with a pang of doubt and pain, the question: was not Mr. Shubrick entitled to know what kept her father in England, and the whole miserable truth of it? She had been so occupied and so happy these last days, she had never fairly faced the question before. It almost caught her breath away.

"Dolly, when we all go back to America, the house I speak of will not be 'far off.'"

"No," said Dolly faintly.

"Look here," said he, taking one of her hands. "It is a house I hope you will like. _I_ like it, though it has no pretension whatever. It is an old house; and the ground belonging to it has been in the possession of my family for a hundred years; the house itself is not quite so old.

But the trees about it are. The old house stands shut up and empty. I told you, I have no one very near of kin left to me; so even when I am at home I do not go there. I have never lived there since my mother left it."

Dolly was silent.

"Now, how soon do you think I may have the house opened and put in order for living in?"

There came up a lovely rose colour in the cheeks he was looking at; however Dolly answered with praiseworthy steadiness----

"That is a matter for you to consider."

"Is it?"

"Certainly."

"But you know it would be no use to open it, until somebody is ready to live there."

"No," said Dolly. "Of course--I suppose not."

"So you see, after all, I have to come to you with questions, seeing you will ask me none."

"Oh," said Dolly, "I will ask you questions, if you will let me. I would rather ask than answer."

"Very well," said he, laughing. "I give place to you. Ask what you like."

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