her sons might; become attached to her; and the likelihood pressed itself more strongly on her, when she saw that Louis in particular was very full of her praises.
One day when the boys had ridden across after school hours to ask Allan to show them how to shoe a horse, they were as usual invited to take tea. The coldness felt towards Mrs. Hammond was not extended to her sons, who were nice lads and had no airs, Mrs. Lindsay said. Amy was busy making a pretty net for Jessie's hair after the pattern of one of her own, which had been greatly admired, and Louis, wishing to show that he could do some things, though he was no quite so clever as Allan, said that he would like to help Miss Staunton with her work, as he had made fishing nets, and could do the stitch ever so fast. Amy's netting-needle, however, being of slender carved ivory was slighter than any that Louis had ever worked at, and the thread finer and more apt to go into knots, and in giving his work a hasty tug he snapped the needle into three pieces. He was sorry that his display of skill had turned out so ill, and profuse in apologies for his awkwardness, and in explanations of how he came to give the thread such a jerk; but he would send to Adelaide for a netting-needle, and it should come out the very first opportunity. Allan saw
