The `Oriana' is due in London, I believe, about February 20, and we shall, I need hardly assure you, not linger long before bringing in our own persons to Maxfield whatever sympathy four loving hearts can carry amongst them.
"With love to the dear boy, believe me, dear cousin, your loving and sympathising fellow-mourner,-- "Edward Oliphant." Mrs Ingleton, highly gratified, handed the beautiful letter first to her son, then to Mr Armstrong.
Roger was hardly as taken with it as his mother.
"Civil enough," said he, "and I dare say he means all he says; but I don't warm to the prospect of being cherished by him.

Besides, there is something a trifle too neat in the way he invites his whole family to Maxfield.

What do you think, Armstrong ?" Mr Armstrong was perusing the letter with knitted brows and a curl of his lips.

He vouchsafed no reply until he had come to the end.

Then he shook the glass ominously out of his eye and said-- "I'll tell you that when I see him." Roger knew his tutor well enough to see that he did not like the letter at all, and he felt somewhat fortified in his own misgivings accordingly.
"I wonder what mother will do with them all ?" said the boy.