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easonable terms? Not that I can away with such nonsense, but your father had his fancies.'

'My father wished us not to break up the home.'

'That was all very well when your poor mother was alive. You have been a good son to her, but it is impossible that you and your sister, mere children as you are, should set up housekeeping by yourselves. Mr. Audley must see it cannot be suffered; it is the bounden duty of your friends to interfere.'

Mr. Audley did not speak. He knew that Felix could reckon on his support; and, moreover, that the youth would show himself to greater advantage when not interfered with. So after pausing to see whether his guardian would speak, Felix said, 'Of course we are in Mr. Audley's power, but he knows that we have made some trial, and except in name we have really stood alone for these three years. Wilmet can quite manage the house, and it would be misery for ever to us all to have no home. In short--' and Felix's face burnt, his voice choked, and his eyes brimmed over with hot indignant tears, as he concluded, 'it shall never be done with my good will.'

'And under the circumstances,' said Mr. Audley, 'I think Felix is right.'

'Very well,' said Thomas Underwood, much displeased. 'I have no power here, and if you and that lad think he can take charge of a house and a dozen children, you must have it your own way. Only, when they have all gone to rack and ruin, and he is sick of being a little tradesman in a country town, he will remember what I said.'

Felix forced back his resentful feelings, and contrived to say, 'Yes, sir, I know it is a great disadvantage, and that you only wish for our good; but I do not think anything would be so bad for the children as to be all cast about the world, with no place to go to, and becoming strangers to one another; and since there is this way of keeping them together, it seems right.'

The steadiness of his manner struck Mr. Underwood, and the reply was not unkind.

'You are a good boy at bottom, Feli

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