“You know, my dear boy,” said his Aunt Johanna to him—­and at her tender tone he looked a little downcast, as when he was a small fellow and had been forgiven something —­ “You know you will have to work very hard.”

“All right, aunt!  I’m your man for that!  This will be a jolly room; and I can smoke up the chimney capitally!”

So they came down stairs quite cheerfully, and Ascott applied himself with the best of appetites to what he called a “hungry” tea.  True, the ham, which Elizabeth had to fetch from an eating house some streets off, cost two shillings a pound, and the eggs, which caused her another war below over the relighting of a fire to boil them, were dismissed by the young gentleman as “horrid stale.”  Still, woman-like, when there is a man in the question, his aunts let him, have his why.  It seemed as if they had resolved to try their utmost to make the new home to which he came, or rather was driven, a pleasant home, and to bind him to it with cords of love, the only cords worth any thing, though sometimes—­Heaved knows why—­even they fail, and are snapped and thrown aside like straws.

Whenever Elizabeth went in and out of the parlor she always heard lively talk going on among the family; Ascott making his jokes, telling about his college life, and planning his life to come as a surgeon in full practice, on the most extensive scale.  And when she brought in the chamber candles, she saw him kiss his aunts affectionately, and even help his Aunt Johanna—­who looked frightfully pale and tired, but smiling still—­to her bed-room door.

“You’ll not sit up long, my dear?  No reading to night?” said she, anxiously.

“Not a bit of it.  And I’ll be up with the lark to-morrow morning.  I really will auntie.  I’m going to turn over a new leaf, you know.”

She smiled again at the immemorial joke, kissed and blessed him, and the door shut up on her and Hilary.

Ascott descended to the parlor, threw himself on the sofa with an air of great relief, and an exclamation of satisfaction that “the women” were all gone.  He did not perceive Elizabeth, who, hidden behind, was kneeling to arrange something in the chiffonnier, till she rose up and proceeded to fasten the parlor shutters.

“Hollo! are you there?  Come, I’ll do that when I go to bed.  You may ‘slope’ if you like.”

“Eh, Sir.”

“Slope, mizzle, cut your stick; don’t you understand.  Any how, don’t stop here, bothering me.”

“I don’t mean to,” replied Elizabeth; gravely, rather than gruffly, as if she had made up her mind to things as they were, and was determined to be a belligerent party no longer.  Besides, she was older now; too old to have things forgiven to her that might be overlooked in a child; and she had received a long lecture from Miss Hilary on the necessity of showing respect to Mr. Ascott, or Mr. Leaf, as it was now decided he was to be called, in his dignity and responsibility as the only masculine head of the family.  As he lay and lounged there, with his eyes lazily shut, Elizabeth stood a minute gazing at him.  Then, steadfast in her new good behavior, she inquired “if he wanted any thing more to-night?”