fellow, and would say, as soon as look at you, that he had no wish to be
encumbered with patronage."

"He would not say so to Lady Latimer," cried Bessie Fairfax. Her voice
rang clear as a bell, and quite startled the composed, refined
atmosphere. Everybody looked at her with a smile. My lady exchanged a
glance with her niece.

"Then young Musgrave is a friend of yours?" she said, addressing her
little guest.

"We are cousins," was Bessie's unhesitating reply.

"I was not aware of it," remarked her grandfather drily.

Bessie was not daunted. Mrs. Musgrave was Mrs. Carnegie's elder sister.
Young Musgrave and the young Carnegies called cousins, and while she was
one of the Carnegies she was a cousin too. Besides, Harry Musgrave was
the nephew of her father's second wife, and their comradeship dated from
his visits to the rectory while her father was alive. She did not offer
explanations, but in her own mind she peremptorily refused to deny or
relinquish that cousinship. She went on eating in a dream of confusion,
very rosy as to the cheeks and very downcast as to the eyes, but not at
all ashamed. The little girls wondered with great amazement. Mr. Wiley
did not relish his rebuke, and eyed Bessie with anything but charity.
His bad genius set him expatiating further on the hazardous theme of
ambition in youths of low birth and mean estate, with allusions to Brook
and the wheelwright's shed that could not be misunderstood. Mr. Fairfax,
observing his granddaughter, felt uneasy. Lady Latimer generalized to
stop the subject. Suddenly said Bessie, flashing at the rector, and