"I'll boun' there an't!" said Tom, opening his mouth for the strawberries with much the air of a handsome, saucy robin.

"Well," said Harry, "I should like to know what brought him over here. Speak, now, Tom! Weren't you sent with some message?"

"Oh laws, yes!" said Tom, getting up, and scratching his curly head. "Miss Nina sent me. She wants you to get on dat ar horse, and make tracks for home like split foot. She done got letters from two or three of her beaux, and she is dancing and tearing round there real awful. She done got scared, spects; feard they'd all come together."

"And she sent you on a message, and you haven't told me, all this time!" said Harry, making a motion as though he was going to box the child's ears; but the boy glided out of his hands as if he had been water, and was gone, vanishing among the shrubbery of the garden; and while Harry was mounting his horse, he reappeared on the roof of the little cabin, caricoling and dancing, shouting at the topmost of his voice,—

"Away down old Virginny,

Dere I bought a yellow girl for a guinea."

"I'll give it to you, some time!" said Harry, shaking his fist at him.

"No, he won't, either," cried Lisette, laughing. "Come down here, Tomtit, and I'll make a good boy of you."

CHAPTER VI

THE DILEMMA

IN order to understand the occasion which hurried Harry home, we must go back to Canema. Nina, after taking her letters from the hands of Tomtit, as we have related, ran back with them into Mrs. Nesbit's room, and sat herself down to read them. As she read, she evidently became quite excited and discomposed, crumpling a paper with her little hand, and tapping her foot impatiently on the carpet.

"There, now, I'm sure I don't know what I shall do, Aunt Nesbit!" addressing her aunt, because it was her outspoken habit to talk to any body or thing which happened to be sitting next to her. "I've got myself into a pretty scrape now!"

"I told you you'd get into trouble, one of these days!"

"Oh, you told me so! If there's anything I hate, it is to have anybody tell me 'I told you so!' But now aunt, really, I know I've been foolish, but I don't know what to do. Here are two gentlemen coming together, that I wouldn't have meet each other here for the world; and I don't know really what I had better do."

"You'd better do just as you please, as you always do, and always would, ever since I knew you," said Aunt Nesbit, in a calm, indifferent tone.

"But, really, aunt, I don't know what's proper to do in such a case."

"Your and my notions of propriety, Nina, are so different, that I don't know how to advise you. You see the consequences, now, of not attending to the advice of your friends. I always knew these flirtations of yours would bring you into trouble." And Aunt Nesbit said this with that quiet, satisfied air with which precise elderly people so often edify their thoughtless young friends under difficulties.