That afternoon the Ashland ladies called bringing with them the elder children of both families.

While their mammas conversed in the drawing-room the little people gathered in the veranda.
All was harmony and good-will among them till Philip Ross, fixing his eyes on Eddie, said with a sneer, "So, Master Ed, though you told me one day you'd never talk to your mamma as I did to mine, you've done a good deal worse.

I don't set up for a pattern good boy, but I'd die before I'd shoot my father." Eddie's eyes sought the floor while his lips trembled and two great tears rolled down his burning cheeks.
"Phil Ross," cried Gertrude, "I'm ashamed of you! of course he didn't do it a-purpose." "May be not; he didn't disobey on purpose?
hadn't his father--" But catching a reproachful, entreating look from Elsie's soft, brown eyes, he stopped short and turning away, began to whistle carelessly, while Vi, putting her small arms about Eddie's neck, said, "Phil Ross, you shouldn't 'sult my brother so, 'cause he wouldn't 'tend to hurt papa; no, not for all the world;" Harold chiming in, "'Course my Eddie wouldn't!" and Bruno, whom he was petting and stroking with his chubby hands, giving a short, sharp bark, as if he too had a word to say in defence of his young master.
"Is that your welcome to visitors, Bruno ?" queried a young man of eighteen or twenty, alighting from his horse and coming up the steps into the veranda.
"You must please excuse him for being so ill-mannered, Cousin Cal," little Elsie said, coming forward and offering her hand with a graceful courtesy very like her mamma's.

"Will you walk into the drawing-room?
our mammas are all there." "Presently, thank you," he said, bending down to snatch a kiss from the sweet lips.
She shrank from the caress almost with aversion.
"What's the use of being so shy with a cousin ?" he asked, laughing, "why Molly Percival likes to kiss me." "I think Molly would not be pleased if she knew you said that," remarked the little girl, in a quiet tone, and moving farther from him as she spoke.
"Holding a levee, eh ?" he said, glancing about upon the group.

"How d'ye, young ladies and gentlemen?
Holloa, Ed! so you're the brave fellow that shot his father?
Hope your grandfather dealt out justice to you in the same fashion that Wal and Dick's did to them." Eddie could bear no more, but burst into an agony of tears and sobs.
"Calhoun Conly, do you think it very manly for a big fellow like you to torment such a little one as our Eddie ?" queried Elsie, with rising indignation.
"No, I don't," he said frankly.