I made a strong effort to restrain my tears of shame and vexation, and said very heartily—

"I'm very sorry, Papa. I didn't think of it's being wrong."

"I quite believe that, my boy. But you see that it's not right now, don't you?"

"Oh yes!" I exclaimed, "and I won't listen any more, father." We made it up lovingly, Rubens flying frantically at our heads to join in the kisses and reconciliation. He had been anxiously watching us, being well aware that something was amiss.

"I don't mean to tell you what Mr. Andrewes and I were talking about," said my father, "because I did not wish you to hear. But I will tell you that you made a very bad guess at the secret. We were not talking of a tutor, or dreaming of one, and you have vexed yourself for nothing. However, I think it serves you right for listening. But we won't talk of that any more."

I do not think Nurse Bundle was disposed to blame me as much as I now blamed myself; but she was invariably loyal to my father's decisions, and never magnified her own indulgence in the nursery by pitying me if I got into scrapes in the drawing-room.

"My dear," said she, "your Pa's a gentleman, every inch of him. You listen to him, and try and do as he does, and you'll grow up just such another, and be a pride and blessing to all about you."

But we both rejoiced that at any rate our fears were unfounded in reference to the much-dreaded Mr. Gray.



CHAPTER XVI

THE REAL MR. GRAY—NURSE BUNDLE REGARDS HIM WITH DISFAVOUR

My feelings may therefore be "better imagined than described" when, at about ten o'clock the following morning, my father called me downstairs, and said, with an odd expression on his face,

"Regie, Mr. Gray has come."

Not for one instant did I in my mind accuse my father of deceiving me. My faith in him was as implicit as he well deserved that it should be. Black might be white, two and two might make five, impossible things might be possible, but my father could not be in the wrong. It was evident that I must have misunderstood him last night. I looked very crestfallen indeed.

My father, however, seemed particularly cheerful, even inclined to laugh, I thought. He took my hand and we went to the front door, my heart beating wildly, for I was a delicate unrobust lad yet, far too easily upset and excited. More like a girl, in fact, if the comparison be not an insult to such sturdy maids as Cousin Polly.

Outside we found a man-servant on a bay horse, holding a little white pony, on which, I supposed, the little tutor had been riding. But he himself was not to be seen. I tried hard to be manly and calm, and being much struck by the appearance of the pony, who, when I came down the steps, had turned towards me the gentlest and most intelligent of faces, with a splendid long curly white forelock streaming down between his kind dark eyes, I asked—

"Is that Mr. Gray's pony, father?"

"What do you think of it?" said my father.

"Oh, it's a little dear," was my emphatic answer, and as the pony unmistakably turned his head to me, I met his friendly advances by going up to him, and in another moment my arms were round his neck, and he was rubbing his soft, strong nose against my shoulder, and we were kissing and fondling each other in happy forgetfulness of everything but our sudden friendship, whilst the man-servant (apparently an Irishman) was firing off ejaculations like crackers on the fifth of November.

"Sure, now, did ever anyone see the like—just to look at the baste—sure he knows it's the young squire himself entirely. Och, but the young gintleman's as well acquainted with horses as myself—sure he'd make friends with a unicorn, if there was such an animal; and it's the unicorn that would be proud to let him, too!"

"It has been used to boys, I think?" said my father.

"Ye may say that, yer honour. It likes boys better than man, woman, or child, and it's not every baste ye can say that for."

"A good many beasts have reason to think very differently, I fear," said my father.

"And that's as true a word as your honour ever spoke," assented the groom.

Meanwhile a possible ground of consolation was beginning to suggest itself to my mind.

"Will Mr. Gray keep his pony here?" I asked,

"The pony will live here," said my father.

"Oh, do you think," I asked, "do you think, that if I am very good, and do my lessons well, Mr. Gray will sometimes let me ride him? He is such a darling!" By which I meant the pony, and not Mr. Gray. My father laughed, and put his hand on my shoulders.

"I have only been teasing you, Regie," he said. "You know I told you there was no tutor in the case. Mr. Andrewes and I were talking about this pony, and when Mr. Andrewes said grey, he spoke of the colour of the pony, and not of anybody's name."

"Then is the pony yours?" I asked.

My father looked at my eager face with a pleased smile.

"No, my boy," he said, "he is yours."

The wild delight with which I received this announcement, the way I jumped and danced, and that Rubens jumped and danced with me, my gratitude and my father's satisfaction, the renewed amenities between myself and my pony, his obvious knowledge of the fact that I was his master, and the running commentary of the Irishman, I will not attempt to describe.

The purchase of this pony was indeed one of my father's many kind thoughts for my welfare and amusement. My odd pilgrimage to the Rectory in search of change and society, and the pettish complaints of dulness and monotony at home which I had urged to account for my freak of "dropping in," had seemed to him not without a certain serious foundation. Except for walks about the farm with him, and stolen snatches of intercourse with the grooms, and dogs, and horses in the stables (which both he and Nurse Bundle discouraged), I had little or no amusement proper to a boy of my age. I was very well content to sit with Rubens at Mrs. Bundle's apron-string, but now and then I was, to use an expressive word, moped. My father had taken counsel with Mr. Andrewes, and the end of it all was that I found myself the master of the most charming of ponies, with the exciting prospect before me of learning to ride. The very thought of it invigorated me. Before the Irish groom went away I had asked if my new steed "could jump." I questioned my father's men as to the earliest age at which young gentlemen had ever been allowed to go out hunting, within their knowledge. I went to bed to dream of rides as wild as Mazeppa's, of hairbreadth escapes, and of feats of horsemanship that would have amazed Mr. Astley. And hopes and schemes so wild that I dared not bring them to the test of my father's ridicule, I poured with pride into Nurse Bundle's sympathetic ear.

Dear, good, kind Nurse Bundle! She was indeed a mother to me, and a mother's anxieties and disappointments were her portion. The effect of her watchful constant care of my early years for me, was whatever good there was about me in health or manners. The effect of it for her was, I believe, that she was never thoroughly happy when I was out of her sight. In these circumstances, it seemed hard that when most of my infantile diseases were over, when I was just becoming very intelligent (the best company possible, Mrs. Bundle declared), when I wore my clothes out reasonably, and had exchanged the cries which exercise one's lungs in infancy for rational conversation by the nursery fireside, I should be drawn away from nurse and nursery almost entirely. It was right and natural, but it was hard. Nurse Bundle felt it so, but she never complained. When she felt it most, she only said, "It's all just as it should be." And so it was. Boys and ducklings must wander off some time, be mothers and hens never so kind! The world is wide, and duck-ponds are deep. The young ones must go alone, and those who tremble most for their safety cannot follow to take care of them.

I really shrink from realizing to myself what Nurse Bundle must have suffered whilst I was learning to ride. The novel exercise, the stimulus of risk, that "put new life into me," were to her so many daily grounds for the sad probability of my death.

"Every blessed afternoon do I look to see him brought home on a shutter, with his precious neck broken, poor lamb!" she exclaimed one afternoon, overpowered by the sight of me climbing on to the pony's back, which performance I had brought her downstairs to witness, and endeavoured to render more entertaining and creditable by secretly stimulating the pony to restlessness, and then hopping after him with one foot in the stirrup, in what I fancied to be a very knowing manner.

"Why, my dear Mrs. Bundle," said my father, smiling, "you kill him at least three hundred and sixty-four times oftener in the course of the year than you need. If he does break his neck, he can only do it once, and you bewail his loss every day."

"Now, Heaven bless the young gentleman, sir, and meaning no disrespect, but don't ye go for to tempt Providence by joking about it, and him perhaps brought a hopeless corpse to the side door this very evening," said Mrs. Bundle, her red cheeks absolutely blanched by the vision she had conjured up. Why, I cannot say, but she had fully made up her mind that when I was brought home dead, as she believed that, sooner or later, I was pretty sure to be, I should be brought to the side-door. Now "the side-door," as it was called, was a little door leading into the garden, and less used, perhaps, than any other door in the house. Mrs. Bundle, I believe, had decided that in that tragedy which she was constantly rehearsing, the men who should find my body would avoid the front-door, to spare my father the sudden shock of meeting my corpse. The side-door, too, was just below the nursery windows. Mrs. Bundle herself, would, probably, be the first to hear any knocking at it, and she naturally pictured herself as taking a prominent part in the terrible scene she so often fancied. It was perhaps a good thing, on the whole, that she chose this door in preference to those in constant use, otherwise every ring or knock at the front or back door must have added greatly to her anxieties.

I fear I did not do much to relieve them. I rather aggravated them. Partly I believe in the conceit of showing off my own skill and daring, and partly by way of "hardening" Mrs. Bundle's nerves. When more knowledge, or longer custom, or stronger health or nerves, have placed us beyond certain terrors which afflict other people, we are apt to fancy that, by insisting upon their submitting to what we do not mind, our nervous friends can or ought to be forced into the unconcern which we feel ourselves; which is, perhaps, a little too like dosing the patient with what happens to agree with the doctor.

Thus I fondled my pony's head and dawdled ostentatiously at his heels when Nurse Bundle was most full of fears of his biting or kicking. But I feel sure that this, and the tricks I played to show the firmness of my "seat," only made it seem to her the more certain that, from my recklessness, I must some day be bitten, kicked, or thrown.

I had several falls, and one or two narrow escapes from more serious accidents, which, for the moment, made my father as white as Mrs. Bundle. But he was wise enough to know that the present risks I ran from fearlessness were nothing to the future risks against which complete confidence on horseback would ensure me. And so with the ordinary mishaps, and with days and hours of unspeakable and healthy happiness, I learnt to ride well and to know horses. And poor Mrs. Bundle, sitting safely at home in her rocking-chair, endured all the fears from which I was free.

"Now look, my deary," said she one day; "don't you go turning your sweet face round to look up at the nursery windows when you're a riding off. I can see your curls, bless them! and that's enough for me. Keep yourself still, love, and look where you're a going, for in all reason you've plenty to do with that. And don't you go a waving your precious hand, for it gives me such a turn to think you've let go, and have only got one hand to hold on with, and just turning the corner too, and the pony a shaking its tail, and shifting about with its back legs, till how you don't slip off on one side passes me altogether."

"Why, you don't think I hold on by my hands, do you?" I cried.

"And what should you hold on with?" said Mrs. Bundle. "Many's the light cart I've rode in, but never let go my hold, unless with one hand, to save a bag or a bandbox. And though it's jolting, I'm sure a light cart's nothing to pony-back for starts and unexpectedness."

I tried in vain to make Nurse Bundle like my pony.

"I've seen plenty of ponies!" she said, severely; by which she meant not that she had seen many, but that what she had seen of them had been more than enough. "My brother-in-law's first cousin had one—a little red-haired beast—as vicious as any wild cat. It won a many races, but it was the death of him at last, according to the expectations of everybody. He was brought home on a shutter to his family, and the pony grazing close by in the ditch as if nothing had happened. Many's the time I've seen him on it expecting death as little as yourself, and he refused twenty pound for it the Tuesday fortnight before he was killed. But I was with his wife that's now his widow when the body was brought."

By the time that I heard this anecdote I was happily too good a rider to be frightened by it; but I did wish that Mrs. Bundle's relative had died any other death than that which formed so melancholy a precedent in her mind.

The strongest obstacle, however, to any chance of my nurse's looking with favour on my new pet was her profound ignorance of horses and ponies in general. Except as to colour or length of tail, she recognized no difference between one and another. As to any distinctions between "play" and "vice," a fidgety animal and a determined kicker, a friendly nose-rub and a malicious resolve to bite, they were not discernible by Mrs. Bundle's unaccustomed eyes.

"I've seen plenty of ponies," she would repeat; "I know what they are, my dear," and she invariably followed up this statement by rehearsing the fate of her brother-in-law's cousin, sometimes adding—

"He was very much giving to racing, and being about horses. He was a little man, and suffered a deal from the quinsies in the autumn."

"What a pity he didn't die of a quinsy instead of breaking his neck!" I felt compelled to say one day.

"He might have lived to have done that if it hadn't a been for the pony," said Mrs. Bundle emphatically.



CHAPTER XVII

I FAIL TO TEACH LATIN TO MRS. BUNDLE—THE RECTOR TEACHES ME

I was soon to discover the whole of my father's plans with Mr. Andrewes for my benefit. Not only had they decided that I was to have a pony, and learn to ride, but it was also settled that I was to go daily to the Rectory to "do lessons" with the Rector.

I was greatly pleased. I had already begun Latin with my father, and had vainly endeavoured to share my educational advantages with Mrs. Bundle, by teaching her the first declension.

"Musa, amuse," she repeated after me on this occasion.

"Musae, of a muse," I continued.

"Of amuse! There's no sense in that, my dearie," said Mrs. Bundle; and as my ideas were not very well defined on the subject of the muses, and as Mrs. Bundle's were even less so as to genders, numbers, and cases, I reluctantly gave in to her decision that "Latin was very well for young gentlemen, but good plain English was best suited to the likes of her."

She was greatly delighted, however, with a Latin valentine which I prepared for her on the ensuing 14th of February, and caused to be delivered by the housemaid, in an envelope with an old stamp, and postmarks made with a pen and a penny. The design was very simple; a heart traced in outline from a peppermint lozenge of that shape, which came to me in an ounce of "mixed sweets" from the village shop. The said heart was painted red and below it I wrote in my largest and clearest handwriting, Mrs. B. Amo te. When the Latin was translated for her, her gratification was great. At first she was put out by there being only two Latin words to three English ones, but she got over the difficulty at last by always reading it thus:—

"A mo te, I love thee."

My Latin had not advanced much beyond this stage when I began to go to Mr. Andrewes every day.

Thenceforward I progressed rapidly in my learning. Mr. Andrewes was a good scholar, and (quite another matter) a good teacher; and I fancy that I was not wanting in quickness or in willingness to work. But Latin, and arithmetic, and geography, and the marvellous improvement he soon made in my handwriting, were small parts indeed of all that I owe to that good friend of my childhood. I suppose that—other things being equal—children learn most from those who love them best, and I soon found out that I was the object of a strangely strong affection in my new teacher. The chief cause of this I did not then know, and only learnt when death had put an end, for this life, to our happy intercourse. But I had a child's complacent appreciation of the fact that I was a favourite, and on the strength of it I haunted the Rectory at all hours, confident of a welcome. I turned over the Rector's books, and culled his flowers, and joined his rides, and made him tell me stories, and tyrannized over him as over a docile playfellow in a fashion that astonished many grown-up people who were awed and repelled by his reserve and eccentricities, and who never knew his character as I knew it till he could be known no more. But I fancy that there are not a few worthy men who, shy and reserved, are only intimately known by the children whom they love.

I may say that not only did I owe much more than mere learning to Mr. Andrewes, but that my regular lessons were a small part even of his teaching.

"It always seems to me," he said one day, when my father and I were together at the Rectory, "that there are two kinds of learning more neglected than they should be in the education of the young. Religious knowledge, which, after all, concerns the worthiest part of every man, and the longest share of his existence (to say nothing of what it has to do with matters now); and the knowledge of what we call Nature, and of all the laws which concern our bodies, and rule the conditions of life in this world. It's a hobby of mine, Mr. Dacre, and I'm afraid I ride my hobbies rather like a witch on a broomstick. But a man must deal according to his lights and his conscience; and if I am intrusted with the lad's education for a while, it will be my duty and pleasure to instruct him in religious lore and natural science, so far as his age allows. To teach him to know his Bible (and I wish all who have the leisure were taught to read the Scriptures in the original tongues). To teach him to know his Prayer-book, and its history. Something, too, of the history of his Church, and of the faith in which better men than us have been proud to live, and for which some have even dared to die."

When the Rector became warm in conversation, his voice betrayed a rougher accent than we commonly heard, and the more excited he became the broader was his speech. It had got very broad at this point, when my father broke in. "I trust him entirely to you, sir," he said; "but, pardon me, I confess I am not fond of religious prodigies—children who quote texts and teach their elders their duty; and Reginald has quite sufficient tendency towards over-excitement of brain on all subjects."

"I quite agree with you," said Mr. Andrewes. "I think you may trust me. I know well that childhood, like all states and times of ignorance, is so liable to conceit and egotism, that to foster religious self-importance is only too easy, and modesty and moderation are more slowly taught. But if youth is a time when one is specially apt to be self-conceited, surely, Mr. Dacre, it is also the first, the easiest, the purest, and the most zealous in which to learn what is so seldom learned in good time."

"I dare say you are right," said my father.

"People talk with horror of attacks on the faith as sadly characteristic of our age," said the Rector, walking up and down the study, and seemingly forgetful of my presence, if not of my father's, "(which, by-the-bye, is said of every age in turn), but I fear the real evil is that so few have any fixed faith to be attacked. It is the old, old story. From within, not from without. The armour that was early put on, that has grown with our growth, that has been a strength in time of trial, and a support in sorrow, and has given grace to joy, will not quickly be discarded because the journals say it is old-fashioned and worn-out. Life is too short for every man to prove his faith theoretically, but it is given to all to prove its practical value by experience, and that method of proof cannot be begun too soon."

"Very true," said my father.

"I don't know why a man's religious belief (which is of course the ground of his religious life) should be supposed to come to him without the trouble of learning, any more than any other body of truths and principles on which people act," Mr. Andrewes went on. "And yet what religious instruction do young people of the educated classes receive as a rule?—especially the boys, for girls get hold of books, and pick up a faith somehow, though often only enough to make them miserable and 'unsettled,' and no more. I often wonder," he added, sitting down at the table with a laugh, "whether the mass of educated men know less of what concerns the welfare of their souls, and all therewith connected, or the mass of educated women of what concerns their bodies, and all therewith connected. I feel sure that both ignorances produce untold and dire evil!"

"So theology and natural science are to be Regie's first lessons?" said my father, drawing me to him.

"I've been talking on stilts, I know," said Mr. Andrewes, smiling. "We'll use simpler terms,—duty to GOD, and duty to Man. One can't do either without learning how, Mr. Dacre."

I repeat this conversation as I have heard it from my father, since I grew up and could understand it. Mr. Andrewes' educational theories were duly put in practice for my benefit. In his efforts for my religious education, Nurse Bundle proved an unexpected ally. When I repeated to her some solemn truth which in his reverent and simple manner he had explained to me; some tale he had told me of some good man, whose example was to be followed; some bit of quaint practical advice he had given me, or perhaps some hymn I had learned by his side, the delight of the good old soul knew no bounds. She said it was as good as a sermon; and as she was particularly fond of sermons, this was a compliment. She used to beg me carefully to remember anything of the kind that I heard, and when I repeated it, she had generally her own word of advice to add, and wonderful tales with which to point the moral,—tales of happy and unhappy deathbeds, of warnings, judgments, and answers to prayer. Tales, too, of the charities of the poor, the happiness of the afflicted, and the triumphs of the deeply tempted, such as it is good for the wealthy, and healthy, and well-cared-for, to listen to. Nurse Bundle's religious faith had a tinge of superstition; that of Mr. Andrewes was more enlightened. But with both it was a matter of every-day life, from which no hope or fear, no sorrow or joy, no plan, no word or deed, could be separated.

And however imperfectly, so it became with me. Like most children, I had my own rather vivid idea of the day of judgment. The thought of death was familiar to me. (It is seldom, I think, a painful one in childhood.) I fully realized the couplet which concluded a certain quaint old rhyme in honour of the four Evangelists which Nurse Bundle had taught me to repeat in bed—

"If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

I used to recite a similar one when I was dressed in the morning—

"If my soul depart to-day, A place in Paradise I pray."

When I had had a particularly pleasant ride, or enjoyed myself much during the day, I thanked GOD specially in my evening prayers. I remember that whatever I wished for I prayed for, in the complete belief that this was the readiest way to obtain it. And it would be untruth to my childish experience not to add that I never remember to have prayed in vain. I also picked up certain little quaint superstitions from Nurse Bundle, some of which cling to me still. Neither she nor I ever put anything on the top of a Bible, and we sometimes sat long in comical and uncomfortable silence because neither of us would "scare the angel that was passing over the house." When the first notes of the organ stirred the swallows in the church eaves to chirp aloud, I believed with Mrs. Bundle that they were joining in the Te Deum. And when sunshine fell on me through the church windows during service, I regarded it as "a blessing."

The other half of Mr. Andrewes' plan was not neglected. From him I learnt (and it is lore to be thankful for) to use my eyes. He was a good botanist, and his knowledge of the medicinal uses of wild herbs ranked next to his piety to raise him in Mrs. Bundle's esteem. When "lessons" were over, we often rode out together. As we rode through the lanes, he taught me to distinguish the notes of the birds, to observe what crops grow on certain soils, and at what seasons the different plants flower and bear fruit. He made me see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, for which I shall ever be grateful to him. I fancy I can hear his voice now, saying in his curt cutting fashion—

"How silly it sounds to hear anybody with a head on his shoulders say, 'I never noticed it!' What are eyes for?"

If I admired some creeper-covered cottage, picturesquely old and tumble-down, he would ask me how many rooms I thought it contained—if I fancied the roof would keep out rain or snow, and how far I supposed it was convenient and comfortable for a man and his wife and six children to live in. In some very practical problems which he once set me, I had to suppose myself a labourer, with nine shillings a week, and having found out what sum that would come to in half a year, to write on my slate how I would spend the money, to the best advantage, in clothing and feeding two grown-up people and seven children of various ages. As I knew nothing of the cost of the necessaries of life, I went, by Mr. Andrewes' advice, to Nurse Bundle for help.

"What do beef and mutton cost?" was my first question, as I sat with an important air at the nursery table, slate in hand.

"Now bless the dear boy's innocence?" cried Mrs. Bundle. "You may leave the beef and mutton, love. It's not much meat a family gets that's reared on nine shillings a week."

After a series of calculations for oatmeal-porridge, onion-potage, and other modest dainties, during which Mrs. Bundle constantly fell back on the "bits of things in the garden," I said decidedly—

"They can't have any clothes, so it's no good thinking about it."

"Children can't be let go bare-backed," said Mrs. Bundle, with equal decision. "She must take in washing. For in all reason, boots can't be expected to come out of nine shillings a week, and as many mouths to feed."

"She must take in washing, sir," I announced with a resigned air, and the old-fashioned gravity peculiar to me, when I returned to the Rectory next day. "Boots can't come out of nine shillings a week."

The Rector smiled.

"And suppose one of the boys catches a fever, as you did; and they can't have other people's clothes to the house, because of the infection. And then there will be the doctor's bill to pay—what then?"

By this time I had so thoroughly realized the position of the needy family, that I had forgotten it was not a real case, or rather, that no special one was meant. And I begged, with tears in my eyes, that I might apply the contents of my alms-box to paying the doctor's bill.

Many a lesson like this, with oft-repeated practical remarks about healthy situations, proper drainage, roomy cottages, and the like, was engraven by constant repetition on my mind, and bore fruit in after years, when the welfare of many labourers and their families was in my hands.

It is difficult to convey an idea of the learning I gained from my good friend, and yet to show how free he was from priggishness, or from always playing the schoolmaster. He was simply the most charming of companions, who tried to raise me to his level, and interest me in what he knew and thought himself, instead of coming down to me, and talking the patronizing nonsense which is so often supposed to be acceptable to children.

Across all the years that have parted us in this life I fancy at times that I see his grey eyes twinkling under their thick brows once more, and hear his voice, with its slightly rough accent, saying—

"Think, my dear lad, think! Pray learn to think!"



CHAPTER XVIII

THE ASTHMATIC OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS RIDDLES—I PLAY TRUANT AGAIN—IN THE BIG GARDEN

It was perhaps partly because, like most only children, I was accustomed to be with grown-up people, that I liked the way in which Mr. Andrewes treated me, and resented the very different style of another friend of my father, who always bantered me in a playful, nonsensical fashion, which he deemed suitable to my years.

The friend in question was an old gentleman, and a very benevolent one. I think he was fond of children, and I am sure he was kind.

He never came without giving me half-a-guinea before he left, generally slipping it down the back of my neck, or hiding it under my plate at dinner, or burying it in an orange. He had a whole store of funny tricks, which would have amused and pleased me if I might have enjoyed them in peace. But he never ceased teasing me, and playing practical jokes on me. And the worst of it was, he teased Rubens also.

Mr. Andrewes often afterwards told of the day when I walked into the Rectory—my indignant air, he vowed, faithfully copied by the dog at my heels, and without preface began:

"I know I ought to forgive them that trespass against us, but I can't. He put cayenne pepper on to Rubens' nose."

In justice to ourselves, I must say that neither Rubens nor I bore malice on this point, but it added to the anxiety which I always felt to get out of the old gentleman's way.

By him I was put through those riddles which puzzle all childish brains in turn: "If a herring and a half cost threehalfpence," etc. And if I successfully accomplished this calculation, I was tripped up by the unfair problem, "If your grate is of such and such dimensions, what will the coals come to?" I can hear his voice now (hoarse from a combination of asthma and snuff-taking) as he poked me jocosely but unmercifully "under the fifth rib," as he called it, crying—

"Ashes! my little man. D'ye see? Ashes! Ashes!"

After which he took more snuff, and nearly choked himself with laughing at my chagrin.

Greatly was Nurse Bundle puzzled that night, when I stood, ready for bed, fumbling with both hands under my nightshirt, and an expression of face becoming a surgeon conducting a capital operation.

"Bless the dear boy!" she cried. "What are you doing to yourself, my dear?"

"How does he know which is the fifth rib?" I almost howled in my vexation. "I don't believe it was the fifth rib! I wish I hadn't a fifth rib! I wish I might hurt his fifth rib!"

I think the old gentleman would have choked with laughter if he could have seen and heard me.

One day, to my father's horror, I candidly remarked,

"It always makes me think of the first of April, sir, when you're here."

I did not mean to be rude. It was simply true that the succession of "sells" and practical jokes of which Rubens and I were the victims during his visits did recall the tricks supposed to be sacred to the Festival of All Fools.

To do the old gentleman justice, he heartily enjoyed the joke at his own expense; laughed and took snuff in extra proportions, and gave me a whole guinea instead of half a one, saying that I should go to live with him in Fools' Paradise, where little pigs ran about ready roasted with knives and forks in their backs; adding more banter and nonsense of the same kind, to the utter bewilderment of my brain.

He was the occasion of my playing truant to the Rectory a second time. Once, when he was expected, I took my nightshirt from my pillow, and followed by Rubens, presented myself before the Rector as he sat at breakfast, saying, "Mr. Carpenter is coming, and we can't endure it. We really can't endure it. And please, sir, can you give us a bed for the night? And I'm very sorry it isn't a clean one, but Nurse keeps the nightgowns on the top shelf, and I didn't want her to know we were coming."

Mr. Andrewes kept me with him for some hours, but he persuaded me to return and meet the old gentleman, saying that it was only due to his real kindness to bear with his little jokes; and that I ought to try and learn to make allowances, and "put up with" things that were not quite to my mind. So I went back, and partly because of my efforts to be less easily annoyed, and partly because I was older than at his latest visit, and knew all the riddles, and could see through his jokes more quickly, I got on very well with him.

Very glad I was afterwards that I had gone back and spent a friendly evening with the kind old man; for the following spring his asthma became worse and worse, and he died. That visit was his last to us. He teased me and Rubens no more. But when I heard of his death, I felt what I said, that I was very sorry. He had been very kind and his pokes and jokes were trifles to look back upon.

Mr. Andrewes kept up his interest in my garden. Indeed, I soon got beyond the childish way of gardening; I ceased to use my watering-pot recklessly, and to take up my plants to see how they were getting on. I was promoted from my little beds to some share in the large flower-garden. My father was very fond of his flowers, and greatly pleased to find me useful.

Some of the happiest hours I ever spent were those in which I worked with him in "the big garden;" Rubens lying in the sun, keeping imaginary guard over my father's coat. We had a friendly rivalry with the Rectory, in which I felt the highest interest. Sometimes, however, I helped Mr. Andrewes himself, when he rewarded me with plants and good advice. The latter often in quaint rhymes, such as

"This rule in gardening never forget, To sow dry, and to set wet."

But after a time, and to my deep regret, Mr. Andrewes gave up the care of my education. He said his duties in the parish did not allow of his giving much time to me; and though my father had no special wish to press my studies, and was more anxious for the benefit of the Rector's influence, Mr. Andrewes at last persuaded him that he ought to get a resident tutor and prepare me for a public school.

By this time I had almost forgotten my foolish prejudice against the imaginary Mr. Gray, and was only sorry that I could no longer do lessons with the Rector.

I suppose it was in answer to some inquiries that he made that my father heard of a gentleman who wanted such a situation as ours. He heard of him from Leo Damer's guardian, and the gentleman proved to be the very tutor whom I had seen from the nursery windows of Aunt Maria's house. He had remained with Leo ever since, but as Leo's guardian had now sent him to school, the tutor was at liberty.

In these circumstances, I felt that he was not quite a stranger, and was prepared to receive him favourably.

Indeed, when his arrival was close at hand, Nurse Bundle and I took an hospitable pleasure in looking over the arrangements of his room, and planning little details for his comfort.

He came at last, and my father was able to announce to Aunt Maria (who had never approved of what she called "Mr. Andrewes' desultory style of teaching") that my education was now placed in the hands of a resident tutor.



CHAPTER XIX

THE TUTOR—THE PARISH—A NEW CONTRIBUTOR TO THE ALMS-BOX

Mr. Clerke was a small, slight, fair man. He was short-sighted, which caused him to carry a round piece of glass about the size of a penny in his waistcoat pocket, and from time to time to stick this into his eye, where he held it in a very ingenious, but, as it seemed to me, dangerous fashion.

It took me quite a fortnight to get used to that eye-glass. It was like a policeman's bull's-eye lantern. I never knew when it might be turned on me. Then the glass had no rim, the edges looked quite sharp, and the reckless way in which the tutor held it squeezed between his cheek and eyebrow was a thing to be at once feared and admired.

I was sitting over my Delectus one morning, unwillingly working at a page which had been set as a punishment for some offence, with my hands buried in my pockets, fumbling with halfpence and other treasures there concealed, when, seeing my tutor stick his glass into his eye as he went to the bookcase, I pulled out a halfpenny to try if I could hold it between cheek and brow, as he held his glass. After many failures, I had just triumphantly succeeded when he caught sight of my reflection in a mirror, and seeing the halfpenny in my eye, my chin in air, and my face puckered up with what must have been a comical travesty of his own appearance, he concluded that I was mimicking him, and defying his authority, and coming quickly up to me he gave me a sharp box on the ear.

In the explanation which followed, he was candid enough to apologize handsomely for having "lost his temper," as he said; and having remitted my task as an atonement, took me out fishing with him.

We got on very well together. At first I think my old-fashioned ways puzzled him, and he was also disconcerted by the questions which I asked when we were out together. Perhaps he understood me better when he came to know Mr. Andrewes, and learned how much I had been with him.

He had a very high respect for the Rector. The first walk we took together was to call at the Rectory. We stayed luncheon, and Mr. Andrewes had some conversation with the tutor which I did not hear. As we came home, I was anxious to learn if Mr. Clerke did not think my dear friend "very nice."

"Mr. Andrewes is a very remarkable man," said the tutor. And he constantly repeated this. "He is a very remarkable man."

After a while Mr. Clerke ceased to be put out by my asking strange unchildish questions which he was not always able to answer. He often said, "We will ask Mr. Andrewes what he thinks;" and for my own part, I respected him none the less that he often honestly confessed that he could not, off-hand, solve all the problems that exercised my brain. He was not a good general naturalist but he was fond of geology, and was kind enough to take me out with him on "chipping" expeditions, and to start me with a "collection" of fossils. I had already a collection of flowers, a collection of shells, a collection of wafers, and a collection of seals. (People did not collect monograms and old stamps in my young days.) These collections were a sore vexation to Nurse Bundle.

"Whatever a gentleman like the Rector is thinking of, for to encourage you in such rubbish, my dear," said she, "it passes me! It's vexing enough to see dirt and bits about that shouldn't be, when you can take the dust-pan and clear 'em away. But to have dead leaves, and weeds, and stones off the road brought in day after day, and not be allowed so much as to touch them, and a young gentleman that has things worth golden guineas to play with, storing up a lot of stuff you could pick off any rubbish-heap in a field before it's burned—if it was anybody but you, my dear, I couldn't abear it. And what's a tutor for, I should like to know?"

(Mrs. Bundle, who at no time liked blaming her darling, had now acquired a habit of laying the blame of any misdoings of mine on the tutor, on the ground that he "ought to have seen to" my acting differently.)

If Mr. Clerke discovered that he could confess to being puzzled by some of my questions, without losing ground in his pupil's respect, I soon found out that my grown-up tutor had not altogether outlived boyish feelings. It dimly dawned on me that he liked a holiday quite as well, if not better than myself; and as we grew more intimate we had many a race and scramble and game together, when bookwork was over for the day. He rode badly, but with courage, and the mishaps he managed to suffer when riding the quietest and oldest of my father's horses were food for fun with him as well as with me.

He told me that he was going to be a clergyman, and on Sunday afternoons we commonly engaged in strong religious discussions. During the fruit season it was also our custom on that day to visit the kitchen-garden after luncheon, where we ate gooseberries, and settled our theological differences. There is a little low, hot stone seat by one of the cucumber frames on which I never can seat myself now without recollections of the flavour of the little round, hairy, red gooseberries, and of a lengthy dispute which I held there with Mr. Clerke, and which began by my saying that I looked forward to meeting Rubens "in a better world." I distinctly remember that I could bring forward so little authority for my belief, and the tutor so little against it, that we adjourned by common consent to the Rectory to take Mr. Andrewes' opinion, and taste his strawberries.

I feel quite sure that Mr. Clerke, as well as myself, strongly felt the Rector's influence. He often said in after-years how much he owed to him for raising his aims and views about the sacred office which he purposed to fill. He had looked forward to being a clergyman as to a profession towards which his education and college career had tended, and which, he hoped, would at last secure him a comfortable livelihood through the interest of some of his patrons. But intercourse with the Rector gave a higher tone to his ideas. He would have been a clergyman of high character otherwise, but now he aimed at holiness; he would never have been an idle one, but now his wish was to learn how much he could do, and how well he could do that much for the people who should be committed to his charge. He was by no means a reticent man, he liked sympathy, and soon got into the habit of confiding in me for want of a better friend. Thus as he began to take a most earnest interest in parish work, and in schemes for the benefit of the people, our Sunday conversations became less controversial, and we gossiped about schools and school-treats, cricket-clubs, drunken fathers, slattern mothers, and spoiled children, and how the evening hymn "went" after the sermon on Sunday, like district visitors at a parish tea-party. What visions of improvement amongst our fellow-creatures we saw as we wandered about amongst the gooseberry-bushes, Rubens following at my heels, and eating a double share from the lower branches, since his mouth had not to be emptied for conversation! We often got parted when either of us wandered off towards special and favourite trees. Those bearing long, smooth green gooseberries like grapes, or the highly-ripened yellows, or the hairy little reds. Then we shouted bits of gossip, or happy ideas that struck us, to each other across the garden. And full of youth and hopefulness, in the sunshine of these summer Sundays, we gave ourselves credit for clear-sightedness in all our opinions, and promised ourselves success for every plan, and gratitude from all our proteges.

Mr. Andrewes had started a Sunday School with great success (Sunday Schools were novelties then), and Mr. Clerke was a teacher. At last, to my great delight, I was allowed to take the youngest class, and to teach them their letters and some of the Catechism.

About this time I firmly resolved to be a parson when I grew up. My great practical difficulty on this head was that I must, of course, live at Dacrefield, and yet I could not be the Rector. My final decision I announced to Mr. Andrewes.

"Mr. Clerke and I will always be curates, and work under you."

On which the tutor would sigh, and say, "I wish it could be so, Regie, for I do not think I shall ever like any other place, or church, or people so well again."

At this time my alms-box was well filled, thanks to the liberality of Mr. Clerke. He now taxed his small income as I taxed my pocket-money (a very different matter!), and though I am sure he must sometimes have been inconveniently poor, he never failed to put by his share of our charitable store.

Some brooding over the matter led me to say to him one Sunday, "You and I, sir, are like the widow and the other people in the lesson to-day: I put into the box out of my pocket-money, and you out of your living."

The tutor blushed painfully; partly, I think, at my accurate comprehension of the difference between our worldly lots, and partly in sheer modesty at my realizing the measure of his self-sacrifice.

When first he began to contribute, he always kept back a certain sum, which he as regularly sent away, to whom I never knew. He briefly explained, "It is for a good object." But at last a day came when he announced, "I no longer have that call upon me." And as at the same time he put on a black tie, and looked grave for several days, I judged that some poor relation, who was now dead, had been the object of his kindness. He spoke once more on the subject, when he thanked me for having led him to put by a fixed sum for such purposes, and added, "The person to whom I have been accustomed to send that share of the money said that it was worth double to have it regularly."



CHAPTER XX

THE TUTOR'S PROPOSAL—A TEACHERS' MEETING

I think it was Mr. Clerke who first suggested that we should take the Sunday scholars and teachers for a holiday trip. Such things are matters of course now in every parish, but in my childhood it was considered a most marvellous idea by our rustic population. The tutor had heard of some extraordinarily active parson who had done the like by his schools, and partly from real kindness, and partly in the spirit of emulation which intrudes even upon schemes of benevolence, he was most anxious that we at Dacrefield should not "be behindhand" in good works. Competition is a feeling with which children have great sympathy, and I warmly echoed Mr. Clerke's resolve that we would not "be behindhand."

"Let us go to the Rectory at once," said I; "Mr. Andrewes said we might have some of those big yellow raspberries, and we must ask him about it. It's a splendid idea. But where shall we go?"

The matter resolved itself into this question. The Rector was quite willing for the treat. My father gave us a handsome subscription; the farmers followed the Squire's lead. Mr. Andrewes was not behindhand. The tutor and I considered the object a suitable one for aid from our alms-box. There was no difficulty whatever. Only—where were we to go?

Finally, we all decided that we would go to Oakford.

It was not because Oakford had been the end of our consultation long ago, after my illness, nor because Nurse Bundle had any voice in the matter, it was a certain bullet-headed, slow-tongued old farmer, one of our teachers, who voted for our going to Oakford; and more by persistently repeating his advice than by any very strong reasons there seemed to be for our following it, he carried the day.

"I've know'd Oakford, man and boy, for twenty year," he repeated, at intervals of three minutes or so, during what would now be called a "teachers' meeting" in the school-room. In fact, Oakford was his native place, though he was passing his old age in Dacrefield, and he had a natural desire to see it again, and a natural belief that the spot where he had been young and strong, and light-hearted, had especial merits of its own.

Even though we had nothing better to propose, old Giles' love for home would hardly have decided us, but he had something more to add. There was a "gentleman's place" on the outskirts of Oakford, which sometimes, in the absence of the family, was "shown" to the public: old Giles had seen it as a boy, and the picture he drew of its glories fairly carried us away, the Rector and tutor excepted. They shrugged their shoulders with faces of comical despair as the old man, having fairly taken the lead, babbled on about the "picters," the "stattys," and the "yaller satin cheers" in the grand drawing-room; whilst the other teachers listened with open mouths, and an evident and growing desire to see Oakford Grange. I did not half believe in old Giles' wonders, and yet I wished to see the place myself, if only to learn how much of all he described to us was true. I supposed that "the family" must have been at home when I was at Oakford, or Mr. and Mrs. Buckle would surely have taken me to see the Grange.

The Rector suggested that the family might be at home now, and we might have our expedition for nothing; but it appeared that old Giles' sister's grandson had been over to see his great-uncle only a fortnight ago, "come Tuesday," and had distinctly stated that the family "was in furrin' parts," and would be so for months to come. Moreover, he had said that there was a rumour that the place was to be sold, and nobody knew if the next owner would allow it to be "shown," even in his absence. Thus it was evident that if we wanted to see the Grange, it must be "now or never."

On hearing this, our fattest and richest farmer (he took an upper class in school more in deference to his position than to the rather scanty education which accompanied it) rose and addressed the Rector as follows:—

"Reverend sir. I takes the liberty of rising and addressin' of you, with my respex to yourself and Mr. Clerke, and the young gentleman as represents the Squire I've a-been tenant to, man and boy, this thirty year and am proud to name it." (Murmurs of applause from one or two other farmers present, my father being very popular.)

"Reverend sir. I began with bird-scaring, and not a penny in my pocket, that wouldn't have held coppers for holes, if I had, and clothes that would have scared of themselves, letting alone clappers. The Squire knows how much of his land I have under my hand now, and your reverence is acquainted with the years I've been churchwarden.

"Reverend Sir. I am proud to have rose by my own exertions. I never iggerantly set myself against improvements and opportoonities." (Gloom upon the face of the teacher of the fourth class, who objected to machinery, and disbelieved in artificial manures.) "My mottor 'as allus been, 'Never lose a chance;' and that's what I ses on this occasion; 'never lose a chance.'"

As our churchwarden backed his advice by offering to lend waggons and horses to take us to Oakford, if the other farmers would do the same, his speech decided the matter. We all wanted to go to Oakford, and to Oakford it was decided that we should go.



CHAPTER XXI

OAKFORD ONCE MORE—THE SATIN CHAIRS—THE HOUSEKEEPER—THE LITTLE LADIES AGAIN—FAMILY MONUMENTS

The expedition was very successful, and we all returned in safety to Dacrefield; rather, I think, to the astonishment of some of the good-wives of the village, who looked upon any one who passed the parish bounds as a traveller, and thought our jaunt to Oakford "venturesome" almost to a "tempting of Providence."

It is a curious study to observe what things strike different people on occasions of this kind.

It was not the house itself, though the building was remarkably fine (a modern erection on the site of the old "Grange"), nor the natural features of the place, though they were especially beautiful, that roused the admiration of our teachers and their scholars. Somebody said that the house was "a deal bigger than the Hall" (at Dacrefield), and one or two criticisms were passed upon the timber; but the noble park, the grand slopes, the lovely peeps of distance, the exquisite taste displayed in the grounds and gardens about the house, drew little attention from our party. Within, the succession of big rooms became confusing. One or two bits in certain pictures were pronounced by the farmers "as natteral as life;" the "stattys" rather scandalized them, and the historical legends attached by the housekeeper to various pieces of furniture fell upon ears too little educated to be interested. But when we got to the big drawing-room the yellow satin chairs gave general and complete satisfaction. When old Giles said, "Here they be!" we felt that all he had told us before was justified, and that we had not come to Oakford in vain. We stroked them, some of the more adventurous sat upon them, and we echoed the churchwarden's remark, "Yaller satin, sure enough, and the backs gilded like a picter-frame."

I cannot but think that the housekeeper must have had friends visiting her that day, which made our arrival inconvenient and tried her temper—she was so very cross. She ran through a hasty account of each room in injured tones, but she resented questions, refused explanations, and was particularly irritable if anybody strayed from the exact order in which she chose to marshal us through the house. A vein of sarcasm in her remarks quite overpowered our farmers.

"Please to stand off the walls. There ain't no need to crowd up against them in spacyous rooms like these, and the paper ain't one of your cheap ones with a spotty pattern as can be patched or matched anywhere. It come direct from the Indies, and the butterflies and the dragons is as natteral as life. 'Whose picter's that in the last room?' You should have kept with the party, young woman, and then you'd 'ave knowed. Parties who don't keep with the party, and then wants the information repeated, will be considered as another party, and must pay accordingly. Next room, through the white door to the left. Now, sir, we're a-waiting for you! All together, if you please!"



But in spite of the good lady, I generally managed to linger behind, or run before, and so to look at things in my own way. Once, as she was rehearsing the history of a certain picture, I made my way out of the room, and catching sight of some pretty things through an open door at the end of the passage, I went in to see what I could see. Some others were following me when the housekeeper spied them, and bustled up, angrily recalling us, for the room, as we found, was a private boudoir, and not one of those shown to the public. In my brief glance, however, I had seen something which made me try to get some information out of the housekeeper, in spite of her displeasure.

"Who are those little girls in the picture by the sofa?" I asked. "Please tell me."

"I gives all information in reference to the public rooms," replied the housekeeper, loftily, "as in duty bound; but the private rooms is not in my instructions."

And nothing more could I get out of her to explain the picture which had so seized upon my fancy.

It was a very pretty painting—a modern one. Just the heads and shoulders of two little girls, one of them having her face just below that of the other, whose little arms were round her sister's neck. I knew them in an instant. There was no mistaking that look of decision in the face of the protecting little damsel, nor the wistful appealing glance in the eyes of the other. The artist had caught both most happily; and though the fair locks I had admired were uncovered, I knew my little ladies of the beaver bonnets again.

Having failed to learn anything about them from the housekeeper, I went to old Giles and asked him the name of the gentleman to whom the place belonged.

"St. John," he replied.

"I suppose he has got children?" I continued.

"Only one living," said old Giles. "They do say he've buried six, most on 'em in galloping consumptions. It do stand to reason they've had all done for 'em that gold could buy, but afflictions, sir, they be as heavy on the rich man as the poor; and when a body's time be come it ain't outlandish oils nor furrin parts can cure 'em."

I wondered which of the quaint little ladies had died, and whether they had taken her to "furrin parts" before her death; and I thought if it were the grey-eyed little maid, how sad and helpless her little sister must be.

"Only one left?" I said mechanically.

"Ay, ay," said old Giles; "and he be pretty bad, I fancy. They've got him in furrin parts where the sun shines all along; but they do say he be wild to get back home, but that'll not be, but in his coffin, to be laid with the rest in the big vault. Ay, ay, affliction spares none, sir, nor yet death."

So this last of the St. John family was a boy. If the little ladies were his sisters, both must be dead; if not, I did not know who they were. I felt very angry with the housekeeper for her sulky reticence. I was also not highly pleased by her manner of treating me, for she evidently took me for one of the Sunday-school boys. I fear it was partly a shabby pride on this point which led me to "tip" her with half-a-crown on my own account when we were taking leave. In a moment she became civil to slavishness, hoped I had enjoyed myself, and professed her willingness to show me anything about the place any day when there were not so "many of them school children crowging and putting a body out, sir. There's such a many common people comes, sir," she added, "I'm quite wored out, and having no need to be in service, and all my friends a-begging of me to leave. I only stays to oblige Mr. St. John."

It was, I think, chiefly in the way I had of thinking aloud that I said, more to myself than to her, "I'm sure I don't know what makes him keep you, you do it so very badly. But perhaps you're respectable."

The half-crown had been unexpected, and this blow fairly took away her breath. Before her rage found words, we were gone.

I did not fail to call on Mr. and Mrs. Buckle. The shop looked just the same as when I was there with Mrs. Bundle. One would have said those were the very rolls of leather that used to stand near the door. The good people were delighted to see me, and proud to be introduced to Mr. Andrewes and my tutor. I had brought some little presents with me, both from myself and Nurse Bundle, which gave great satisfaction.

"And where is Jemima?" I asked, as I sat nursing an imposing-looking parcel addressed to her, which was a large toilette pincushion made and ready furnished with pins for her by Mrs. Bundle herself.

"Now, did you ever!" cried Mrs. Buckle in her old style; "to think of the young gentleman's remembering our Jemima, and she married to Jim Espin the tinsmith this six months past."

So to the tinsmith's I went, and Jemima was, as she expressed it, "that pleased she didn't know where to put herself," by my visit. She presented me with a small tin lantern on which I had made some remark, and which pleased me well. I saw the drawer of farthing wares also, and might have had a flat iron had I been so minded; but I was too old now to want it for a plaything, and too young yet to take it as a remembrance of the past.

I asked Mrs. Buckle about the two little beaver-bonneted ladies, but she did not help me much. She did not remember them. They might be Mr. St. John's little girls; he had buried four. A many ladies wore beaver bonnets then. This was all she could say, so I gave up my inquiries. It was as we were on our way from the Buckles to join the rest of the party that Mr. Clerke caught sight of the quaint little village church, and as churches and church services were matters of great interest to us just then, the two parsons, the churchwarden, five elder scholars and myself got the key from the sexton and went to examine the interior.

It was an old and rather dilapidated building. The glass in the east window was in squares of the tint and consistency of "bottle glass," except where one fragment of what is technically known as "ruby" bore witness that there had once been a stained window there. There were dirty calico blinds to do duty for stained glass in moderating the light; dirt, long gathered, had blunted the sharpness of the tracery on the old carved stalls in the chancel, where the wood-worms of several generations had eaten fresh patterns of their own, and the squat, solemn little carved figures seemed to moulder under one's eyes. In the body of the church were high pews painted white, and four or five old tombs with life-size recumbent figures fitted in oddly with these, and a skimpy looking prayer-desk, pulpit, and font, which were squeezed together between the half-rotten screen and a stone knight in armour.

"Pretty tidy," said our churchwarden, tapping of the pews with a patronising finger; "but bless and save us, Mr. Andrewes, sir, the walls be disgraceful dirty, and ten shillings' worth of lime and labour would make 'em as white as the driven snow. The sexton says there be a rate, and if so, why don't they whitewash and paint a bit, and get rid of them rotten old seats, and make things a bit decent? You don't find a many places to beat Dacrefield, sir, go as far as you will," he added complacently, and with an air of having exhausted experience in the matter of country churches.

"Them old figures," he went on, "they puts me in mind of one my father used to tell us about, that was in Dacrefield Church. A man with a kind of cap on his face, and his feet crossed, and very pointed toes, and a sword by his side."

"At Dacrefield?" cried Mr. Andrewes; "surely there isn't a Templar at Dacrefield?"

"It were in the old church that came down," continued the churchwarden, "in the old Squire's time. There was a deal of ancient rubbish cleared out then, sir, I've heard, and laid in the stackyard at the Hall. It were when my father were employed as mason under 'brick and mortar Benson,' as they called him, for repairs of a wall, and they were short of stones, and they chipped up the figure I be telling you of. My father allus said he knowed the head was put in whole, and many's the time I've looked for it when a boy."

I think Mr. Andrewes could endure the churchwarden's tale of former destructiveness no longer, and he abruptly called us to come away. I was just running to join the rest at the door, when my eye fell upon a modern tablet of marble above a large cushioned pew. Like the other monuments in the church, it was sacred to the memory of members of the St. John family, and, as I found recorded the names of the wife and six children of the present owner of the estate. Very pathetic, after the record of such desolation, were the words of Job (cut below the bas-relief at the bottom, which, not very gracefully, represented a broken flower): "The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away: blessed be the name of the LORD."

Mr. Clerke was hurrying back up the church to fetch me as I read the text. I had just time to see that the last two names were the names of girls, before I had to join him.

Amy and Lucy. Were those indeed the dainty little children who such a short time ago were living, and busy like myself, happy with the tinsmith's toys, and sad for a drenched doll? Wild speculations floated through my head as I followed the tutor, without hearing one word of what he was saying about tea and teachers, and reaching Dacrefield before dark.

I had wished to be their brother. Supposing it had been so, and that I were now withering under the family doom, homesick and sick unto death "in furrin parts!" My last supposition I thought aloud:

"I suppose they know all the old knights, and those people in ruffs, with their sons and daughters kneeling behind them, now. That is, if they were good, and went to heaven."

"Who do you suppose know the people in the ruffs?" asked the bewildered tutor.

"Amy and Lucy St. John," said I; "the children who died last."

"Well, Regie, you certainly do say the most singular things," said Mr. Clerke.

But that was a speech he often made, with the emphasis as it is given here.



CHAPTER XXII

NURSE BUNDLE FINDS A VOCATION—RAGGED ROBIN'S WIFE—MRS. BUNDLE'S IDEAS ON HUSBANDS AND PUBLIC-HOUSES

I was very happy under Mr. Clerke's sway, and yet I was glad to go to school.

The tutor himself, who had been "on the foundation" at Eton, had helped to fill me with anticipations of public-school life. It was decided that I also should go to Eton, but as an oppidan, and becoming already a partisan of my own part of the school, I often now disputed conclusions or questioned facts in my tutor's school anecdotes, which commonly tended to the sole glorification of the "collegers."

I must not omit to mention an interview that about this period took place between my father and Mrs. Bundle. It was one morning just after the Eton matter had been settled, that my nurse presented herself in my father's library, her face fatter and redder than usual from being swollen and inflamed by weeping.

"Well?" said my father, looking up pleasantly from his accounts. But he added hastily, "Why, bless me, Mrs. Bundle, what is the matter?"

"Asking your pardon for troubling you, sir," Nurse Bundle began in a choky voice, "but as you made no mention of it yourself, sir, your kindness being what it is, and the young gentleman as good as gone to school, and me eating the bread of idleness ever since that tutor come, I wished to know, sir, when you thought of giving me notice."

"Give you notice to do what?" asked my father.

"To leave your service, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, steadily. "There's no nurse wanted in this establishment now, sir."

My father laid one hand on Mrs. Bundle's shoulder, and with the other he drew forward a miniature of my mother which always hung on a standing frame on the writing-table.

"It is like yourself to be so scrupulous," he said; "but you will never again speak of leaving us, Mrs. Bundle. Please, for her sake," added my father, his own voice faltering as he looked towards the miniature. As for Nurse Bundle, her tears utterly forbade her to get out a word.

"If you have too much to do," my father went on, "let a young girl be got to relieve you of any work that troubles you; or, if you very much wish for a home to yourself, I have no right to refuse that, though I wish you could be happy under my roof, and I will see about one of those cottages near the gate. But you will not desert me—and Reginald—after so many years."

"The day I do leave will be the breaking of my heart," sobbed Nurse Bundle, "and if there was any ways in which I could be useful—but take wages for nothing, I could not, sir."

"Mrs. Bundle," said my father, "if your wages were a matter of any importance to me, if I could not afford even to pay you for your work, I should still ask you to share my home, with such comforts as I had to offer, and to help me so far as you could, for the sake of the past. I must always be under an obligation to you which I can never repay," added my father, in his rather elaborate style. "And as to being useful, well, ahem, if you will kindly continue to superintend and repair my linen and Master Reginald's ——"

"Why, bless your innocence, sir, and meaning no disrespect," said Mrs. Bundle, "but there ain't no mending in your linen. There was some darning in the tutor's socks, but you give away half-a-dozen pair last Monday, sir, as hadn't a darn in 'em no bigger than a pea."

I think it was the allusion to "giving away" that suggested an idea to my father in his perplexity for employing Nurse Bundle.

"Stay," he exclaimed, "Mrs. Bundle, there is a way in which you could be of the greatest service to me. I often feel that the loss of a lady at the head of my household must be especially felt among the poor people around us—additionally so, as Mr. Andrewes is not married, and there is no lady either at the Rectory or here to visit the sick and encourage the mothers and children. I fear that when I do anything for them it is often in a wrong way, or for wrong objects."

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, an old grievance rushing to her mind, "I had thought myself of making so bold as to speak to you about that there Tommy Masden as you give half-crowns to, as tells you one big lie on the top of another, and his father drinks every penny he earns, and his mother at the back-door all along for scraps, and throwed the Christmas soup to the pig, and said they wasn't come to the workus yet; and a coat as good as new of yours, sir, hanging out of the door of the pawnshop, and giving me such a turn I thought my legs would never have carried me home, till I found you'd given it to that Tommy, who won't do a hand's turn for sixpence, but begs at every house in the parish every week as comes round, and tells everybody, as he tells yourself, sir, that he never gets nothing from nobody."

"Well, well," said my father, laughing, "you see how I want somebody to look out the real cases of distress and deserving poverty. Of course, I must speak to Mr. Andrewes first, Mrs. Bundle, but I am sure he will be as glad as myself that you should do what we have neither of us a wife to undertake."

I know Nurse Bundle was only too glad to reconcile her honest conscience to staying at Dacrefield; and I think the allusion to the lack of a lady head to our household decided her at all risks to remove that reason for a second Mrs. Dacre. Moreover, the duties proposed for her suited her tastes to a shade.

Mr. Andrewes was delighted. And thus it came about that, though my father would have been horrified at the idea of employing a Sister of Mercy, and though Bible-woman and district visitor were names not familiar in our simple parochial machinery, Mrs. Bundle did the work of all three to the great benefit of our poor neighbours.

Not, however, to the satisfaction of those who had hitherto leant most upon the charity of the Hall. A certain picturesquely tattered man, living at some distance from the village, who was in the habit of waylaying my father at certain points on the estate, with well-timed agricultural remarks and a cunning affectation of half-wittedness and good-humour, got henceforward no half-crowns for his pains.

"Mrs. Bundle has knocked off all my pensioners," my father would laughingly complain. But he was quite willing that the half-crowns should now be taken direct to the man's wife and children, instead of passing from his hands to the public-house. "Though really the good woman—for I understand she is a most excellent person—is singularly hard-favoured," my father added, "and looks more as if she thrashed old Ragged Robin than as if he beat her, as I hear he does."

"Nothing inside, and the poker outside, makes a many women as they've no wish to sit for their picter," said Mrs. Bundle, severely, in reply to some remark of mine, reflecting, like my father's, on the said woman's appearance. "And when a woman has children, and their father brings home nothing but kicks and bad language, in all reason if it isn't the death or the ruin of her, it makes her as she 'asn't much time nor spirits to spare for dropping curtseys and telling long tales like some people as is always scrap-seeking at gentry's back-doors. But I knows a clean place when I takes it unawares, and clothes with more patch than stuff, and all the colour washed out of them, and bruises hid, and a bad husband made the best of, and children as knows how to behave themselves."

The warmth of Mrs. Bundle's feelings only prompted me to tease her; and it was chiefly for "the fun of working her up" that I said—

"Ah, but, Nurse, you know we heard she went after him one night to the public-house, and made a row before everybody. I don't mean he ought to go to the public-house, but still, I'm sure if I'd a wife who came and hunted me up when she thought I ought to be indoors, I'd—well, I'd try and teach her to stay at home. Besides, women ought to be gentle, and perhaps if she were sweeter-tempered with him, he'd be kinder to her."

"Do you know what she went for, Master Reginald?" said Nurse Bundle. "Not a halfpenny does he give her to feed the children with, and everything in that house that's got she gets by washing. And the rich folk she washed for kept her waiting for her money—more shame to 'em; there was weeks run on, and she borrowed a bit, and pawned a bit, and when she went the day they said they'd pay her, he'd been before and drawed the money, and was drinking it up when she went to see if she could get any, and then laughed at her, and sent her back to the children as was starving, and the neighbour she'd borrowed of as called her a thief and threatened to have her up. Gentle! why, bless your innocence, who ever knowed gentleness do good to a drunkard? She should have stood up to him sooner, and he'd never have got so bad. She's kept his brute ways to herself and made his home comfortable with her own earnings, till he thinks he may do anything and never bring in nothing. She did lay out some of his behaviour before him that day, and he beat her for it afterwards. But if it had been me, Master Reginald, I'd have had money to feed them children, or I'd have fought him while I'd a bit of breath in my body."

And with all my respect for Nurse Bundle, I am bound to say that I think she would have been as good as her word.

"Go to your tutor, my dear," she continued, "and talk Latin and Greek and such like, as you knows about; but don't talk rubbish about pretty looks and ways for a woman as is tied to a drunkard, for I can't abear it. I seed enough of husbands and public-houses in my young days to keep me a single woman and my own missis. Not but what I've had my feelings like other folk, and plenty of offers, besides a young cabinet-maker as had high wages and the beautifullest complexion you ever saw. But he was overfond of company; so I went to service, and cried myself to sleep every night for three months; and when next I see him he was staggering along the street, and I says, 'I'm sorry to see you like this, William,' and he says, 'It's your doing, Mary; your No's drove me to the glass.' And I says, 'Then it's best as it is. If one No drove you to the glass, you and married life wouldn't suit, for there's plenty of Noes there.' So I left him wiping his eyes, for he always cried when he was in beer. And I says to myself, 'I'll go back to place, where I knows what I'm working for, and can leave it if we don't suit.' And it was always the same, my dear. If it was a nice-looking footman, he'd have his evening out and come home fresh; and if it was an elderly butler as had put a little by, he wanted to set up in the public line. So I kept myself to myself, my dear, for I'm short-tempered at the best, and could never put up with the abuse of a man in liquor."

I was so thoroughly converted to the side of Ragged Robin's wife, that I at once pressed some of my charity money on Mrs. Bundle for her benefit; but I tried to dispute my nurse's unfavourable view of husbands by instancing her worthy brother-in-law at Oakford.

"Ah, yes, Buckle," said Mrs. Bundle, in a tone which seemed to do less justice to the saddler's good qualities than they deserved. "He's a good, soft, easy body, is Buckle."

Whence I concluded that Mrs. Bundle, like some other ladies, was not altogether easy to please.

I think it was during our last walk through the village before Mr. Clerke left us, that he and I called on Ragged Robin's wife. She was thankful, but not communicative, and the eyes, deep set in her bony and discoloured face, seemed to have lost the power of lighting up with hope.

"My dear Regie," said Mr. Clerke, as we turned homewards, "I never saw anything more pitiable than the look in that woman's eyes; and the tone in which she said, 'There be a better world afore us all, sir—I'll be well off then,' when I said I hoped she'd be better off and happier now, quite went to my heart. I'm afraid she never will have much comfort in this world, unless she outlives her lord and master. Do you know, Regie, she reminds me very much of an ill-treated donkey; her bones look so battered, and there's a sort of stubborn hopelessness about her like some poor Neddy who is thwacked and tugged this way and that, work he never so hard. Poor thing, she may well look forward to Heaven," added my tutor, whose kind heart was very sore on this subject, "and it's a blessed thought how it will make up, even for such a life here!"

"What will make it up to the donkeys?" I asked, taking Mr. Clerke at a disadvantage on that standing subject of dispute between us—a "better world" for beasts.

But my tutor only said, "My dear Regie, you do say the most singular things!" which, as I pointed out, was no argument, one way or another.

Meanwhile, through Mrs. Bundle, we did our best for Robin's wife and certain other ill-treated women about the place. Mrs. Bundle could be very severe on the dirt and discomfort which "drove some men to the public as would stay at home if there was a clean kitchen to stay in, and less of that nagging at a man and screaming after children as never made a decent husband nor a well-behaved child yet." Yet in certain cases of undeserved brutality, like Robin's, I fear she sometimes counselled resistance, on the principle that it "couldn't make him do worse, and might make him do better."

I am sure that my father had never thought of Mrs. Bundle acting as sick nurse in the village; but matters seemed to develop of themselves. She was so experienced and capable that she could hardly fail to smoothe the disordered bed-clothes, open the window, clear the room of the shiftless gossips who flocked like ravens to predict death, and take the control of mismanaged sick-rooms. It came to be a common thing that some wan child should present itself at our door with the message that "Missis Bundle she wants her things, for as mother be so bad, she says she'll see her over the night."

As for herself, I doubt if she had ever been happier in her life. Her conscience was at ease, for she certainly worked hard enough for her wages, and it was good to see the glow of pleasure that an oft-repeated remark of my father's never failed to bring over her honest face.

"Don't overwork yourself, Mrs. Bundle. What should we do if you were laid up?"



CHAPTER XXIII

I GO TO ETON—MY MASTER—I SERVE HIM WELL

I went joyfully to school the first time, but each succeeding half with less and less willingness. And yet my school-days were very happy ones, especially to look back upon.

"You will be in the same tutor's house as Lionel Damer," said my father; "and I have written to ask him to befriend you."

"Just the sort of idiotic thing parents do do," said Sir Lionel, on our first meeting. "You may thank your stars I don't pay you off for it."

Leo had grown much taller since we met, but he had lost none of his beauty. I was overpowered by his noble appearance and the air of authority he wore, and then and there gave him the hero-worship of my heart. It was with a thrill of delight that I heard him add, "However, I want a fag, and I dare say I can take you. Any sock with you?"

"Oh, yes, Leo," said I, hastily; "a big hamper. And there are two cakes, and a pigeon pie, and lots of jam, and some macaroons and turnovers, and two bottles of raspberry vinegar."

"My name's Damer," said Leo. "Can you cook?"

"Not yet, Damer," said I, hoping that my answer conveyed my willingness to learn. For I was quite prepared for all the duties of fag life from Mr. Clerke's descriptions. And I was prepared to perform them, pending the time when I should have a fag of my own.

I must do Leo justice. His tyranny was merciful. I was soon expert in preparing his breakfast. I used to fetch him hot dishes from the shop. My own cooking was not good, and I made, so he said, the most execrable coffee, which led him to fling the contents of the pot at me one morning, ruining my shirt, trickling hot and wet down my body under my clothes, and giving me infinite trouble in cleaning his carpet. (As to his coffee, and the salad dressing he made, and his cooking generally, when he chose to do it, I have never met with anything like it since. However, things taste well in one's school-days.)

Leo Damer was one of those people who seem able to do everything just a little better than his neighbours, without attaining overwhelming superiority in any one line. The masters always complained that he did not do as much in school as he might have done, and yet he stood well with them. His conduct was of the highest. I may say here that, knowing him intimately in boyhood and youth, I am able to assert that his moral conduct was always "without reproach." His own freedom from vice, and the tight hand he kept over me, who lived but to admire and imitate him, were of such benefit to me in the manifold temptations of school-life as I can never forget. His self-respect amounted to self-esteem, his love for other people's good opinion to a failing, he was refined to fastidiousness; but I think these characteristics helped him towards the exceptional character he bore. A keen sensitiveness to pain and discomfort, and considerable natural indolence, further tended to keep him out of scrapes into which an adventurous spirit led many more reckless boys. He had never been flogged, and he said he never would be. "I would drown myself sooner," he said to me. And if any dark touch were wanting to complete my hero's portrait, it was given by this terrible threat, in which I put full faith.

He was a dandy, and his dressing-table was the plague of my life. Well do I remember breaking some invaluable toilette preparation on it, and the fit of rage in which he flung the broken bottle at my head. He was very sorry when his first wrath was past, and he bound up my head, and gave me a pound of sausages, and a superbly bound copy of Young's "Night Thoughts," which I still possess. I also retain a white scar above one of my eyes, in common with at least eight out of every ten men I know.

"Do you ever hear from your cousin?" Sir Lionel asked one day in careless tones.

"Polly writes to me sometimes," said I.

"You can show me the next letter you get," said Sir Lionel condescendingly; which I accordingly did, and thenceforward he saw all my letters from her. I was soon clever enough to discover that Leo liked to be asked after by his old friends, and to receive messages from them, which led me to write to Polly, begging her always to send "nice messages" to Sir Lionel, as he would then treat me well, and perhaps give me some of his smoked bacon for breakfast. Her reply was characteristic:

"MY DEAR REGIE,—"

I shan't send nice messages to Leo. I am sorry you showed him the letter where I said he was handsome. Handsome is that handsome does, and if he treats you badly he is very ugly, and I hate him. If he doesn't give you any bacon, he's very mean. You may tell him what I say.

"I am your affectionate cousin,

"POLLY."

I was obliged to hide this letter from Leo; but when he asked me if I had heard from Polly I could not lie to him, and he sent me to Coventry for withholding the letter. I bore a day and a half of his silence and neglect; then I could endure it no longer, and showed him the letter. He was less angry than I expected. He coloured and laughed, and called me a little fool for writing such stuff to Polly, and said her answer was just like her. Then he gave me some of the bacon, and we were good friends again.

But the seal of our friendship was a certain occasion when I saved him from the only flogging with which he was ever threatened.

He was unjustly believed to be concerned in an insolent breach of certain orders, and was sentenced to a flogging which was really the due of another lad whom he was too proud to betray. He would not even condescend to remonstrate with the boy who was meanly allowing him to suffer, and betrayed his anguish in the matter so little that I doubt if the real culprit (who never was a week unflogged himself) had any idea what the punishment was to poor Leo.

He hid himself from us all; but in the evening I got into his room, where I found him, pale and silent, putting some things into a little bag.

"Little one!" he cried, "I know you can keep a secret. I want you to help me off. I'm going to run away."

"Oh Damer!" I cried; "but supposing you're caught; it'll be much worse then."

"They won't catch me," he said, his lip quivering. "I can disguise myself. And I shall never come back till I'm a man. My guardian would bring me here again. He thinks a man can hardly be a gentleman unless he was well flogged in his youth. Look here old fellow, I've left everything here to you. Keep out of mischief as I've shown you how, and—and—you'll tell Polly I wasn't to blame."

I was now weeping bitterly. "Dear Damer," said I, "you can't disguise yourself. Anybody would know you; you're too good-looking. Damer," I added abruptly, "did you ever pray for things? I used to at home, and do you know, they always came true. Wait for me, I'll be back soon," I concluded, and rushing to my room, I flung myself on my knees, and prayed with all my heart for the averting of this, to my young mind, terrible tragedy. I dared not stay long, not knowing what Leo might do, and on the stairs I met the real culprit, who was in our house. To this day I remember with amusement the flood of speech with which, in my excitement, I overwhelmed him. I painted his meanness in the darkest colours, and the universal contempt of his friends. I made him a hero if he took his burden on his own back. I dwelt forcibly on Leo's bitter distress and superior generosity. I bribed him to confess all with my many-weaponed pocket-knife (the envy of the house). I darkly hinted a threat of "blabbing" myself, as my meanness in telling tales would be as nothing to his in allowing Leo to suffer for his fault. Which argument prevailed I shall never know. I fancy Leo's distress and the knife did it between them, for he was both good-natured and greedy. He told the truth by a great effort, and took his flogging with complete indifference.

Thenceforward Leo and I were as brothers. He taught me to sketch, we kept divers pets together, and fused our botanical collections. He cooked unparalleled dishes for us, and read poetry aloud to me with an exquisite justness and delicacy of taste that I have never heard surpassed.

His praise was nectar to me. When he said, "I tell you what, Regie, you've an uncommon lot of general information, I can tell you," my head was quite turned. Whatever he did seemed right to me. When I first came to school, my hat was duly peppered and pickled by the boys and replaced by me with one of unexceptionable shape. My shirts then gave offence to my new master.

"I suppose," he said, surveying me deliberately, "a good many of your things are made by Mrs. Baggage?"

"Nurse Bundle makes my shirts, Damer," said I.

"It's all the same," said Damer. "I knew it was connected with a parcel somehow. Well, the Package patterns are very pretty, no doubt, but I think it's time you were properly rigged out."

Which was duly done; and when holidays came and the scandalized Mrs. Bundle asked what I had done "with them bran-new fine linen shirts," and where "them rubbishing cotton rags" had come from that I brought in their place, I could only inform her, with a feeble imitation of Leo's lofty coolness, that I had used the first to clean Damer's lamp, and that the second were the "correct thing."

One day I said to him, "I don't know why, Damer, but you always make me think of a vision of one of the Greek heroes when I see you walking in the playing-fields."

I believe my simply-spoken compliment deeply gratified him; but he only said, like Mr. Clerke, "You do say the oddest things, little 'un!"



CHAPTER XXIV

COLLECTIONS—LEO'S LETTER—NURSE BUNDLE AND SIR LIONEL

If Nurse Bundle hoped that when I went to school an end would be put to the "collections" which troubled her tidy mind, she was much deceived. Neither Leo nor I were bookworms, and we were not by any means so devoted as some boys to games and athletics. But for collections of all kinds we had a fancy that almost amounted to mania.

Our natural history manias in their respective directions came upon us like fevers. We "sickened" at the sight of somebody else's collection, or because we had been reading about butterflies, or birds' eggs, or water-plants, as the case might be. When "the complaint" was "at its height," we lived only for specimens; we gave up leisure, sleep, and pocket-money to our collection; we made notes and memoranda in our grammars and lexicons that had no classical reference. We sent letters to country newspapers which never appeared, and asked questions that met with no reply. We were apt, also, to recover from these attacks, leaving Nurse Bundle burdened with boxes or folios of dry, dusty broken fragments of plants and insects, which we did not touch, but which she was strictly forbidden to destroy. We pursued our fancies during the holidays. I have now a letter that I got from Damer after my fourth half:

"London.

"MY DEAR REGIE,—

"Eureka! What do you think? My poor governor collected moths. I bullied my guardian till he let me have the collection. Such specimens! No end of foreign ones we know nothing about, and I am having a case made. I found a little book with his notes in. We are quite at sea to go flaring about with nets and bruising the specimens. The way is to dig for chrysalises. Mind you do; and how I envy you! For I have to be in this horrid town, when I long to be grubbing at the roots of trees. Polly quite agrees with me. She hates London; and says the happiest time in her life was when she was at Dacrefield. My only comfort is to go to the old bookstalls and look for books about moths and butterflies. Imagine! The other day when your aunt was out, I took Polly with me. She said she would give anything on earth to go. So we went. We went into some awful streets, and had some oysters at a stall, and came back carrying no end of books; and just as we got in at the door there were your aunt and Lady Chelmsfield coming out. What a rage your aunt was in! I tried to take all the blame, but she shut Polly up for a fortnight. It's a beastly shame, but Polly says the expedition was worth it; her spirit is splendid. I never wrote such a long letter in my life before, but I am in the blues, and have no one to talk to. I wish my poor governor had lived. I wish I were in the country. I wish your aunt was a moth. Wouldn't I pin her to a cork! Mind you work up old Mother Hubbard to a sumptuous provision of grub for next half, and don't forget the other grubs. Would that I could dig with thee for them. Vale!

"Thine ever,

"LIONEL DAMER."

Of course this ended in Leo's being invited to Dacrefield. He came, and, wonderful to relate, we got Polly too. My father invited her and my aunt to visit us, and they came. As Leo said, Aunt Maria "behaved better than we expected." Indeed, Leo had no reason to complain of her treatment of him as a rule, for he was constantly at the Ascotts' house during his holidays.

And so we rambled and scrambled about together, Leo, and Polly, and I. And we added largely to our collections, and made a fernery (the Rector helping us), and rode about the country, and were thoroughly happy. We generally went to the nursery for a short time before dressing for dinner, where we teased and coaxed Mrs. Bundle, and ate large slices of an excellent species of gingerbread called "parliament," which she kept in a tin case in the cupboard. In return for these we entertained her with marvellous "tales of school," rousing her indignation by terrible narratives of tyrannous and cruel fagging, and taking away her breath by tales of reckless daring, amusing impudence, or wanton destructiveness common to boys. Some of these we afterwards confessed to be fables, told—as we politely put it—to "see how much she would swallow."

After dinner we were expected to sit with my father and Aunt Maria in the drawing-room. Then, also, poor Polly was expected to "give us a little music," and dutifully went through some performances which were certainly a remarkable example of how much can be acquired in the way of mechanical musical skill where a real feeling for the art is absent. After politely offering to turn over the leaves of her music, which Polly always declined (it was the key-note of her energetic character that she "liked to do everything herself"), my father generally fell asleep. I whiled away the time by playing with Rubens under the table, Aunt Maria "superintended" the music in a way that must have made any less stolid performer nervous, and Leo was apt to try and distract Polly's attention by grimaces and pantomime of a far from respectful nature behind Aunt Maria's back.

Sir Lionel was not a favourite with Nurse Bundle. I was unfortunate enough to give her a prejudice against him, which nothing seemed to wear out. Thinking his real, or affected mistake about her name a good joke, and having myself the strongest relish and admiration for his school-boy wit, I had told Nurse Bundle of his various versions of her name; and had tried to convey to her the comic nature of the scenes when my hat was pickled, and when Leo condemned my home-made shirts.

But quite in vain. Nurse Bundle's sense of humour (if she had any) was not moved by the things that touched mine. She looked upon the destruction of the hat and the shirts as "a sinful waste," and as to Leo's jokes—

"Called me a baggage, did he?" said the indignant Mrs. Bundle. "I'll Sir Lionel him when I get the chance. At my time of life, too!"

And no explanation from me amended matters. By the time that Leo did come, Nurse Bundle had somewhat recovered from the insult, but he was never a favourite with her. He "chaffed" her freely, and Mrs. Bundle liked to be treated with respect. Still there was a fascination about his beauty and his jokes against which even she was not always proof. I have seen her laugh and fetch out the parliament box when Leo followed her about like a dog walking on its hind legs, wagging an old piece of rope at the end of his jacket for a tail, and singing—

"Good Mother Hubbard, Pray what's in your cupboard? Could you give a poor dog a bone?"

And when he got the parliament he would "sit up" and balance a slice of the gingerbread on his nose, till Polly and I cheered with delight, and Rubens became frantic at the mockery of his own performances, and Mrs. Bundle complained that "Sir Lionel never knowed when to let nonsense be."

But I think she was something like the housemaid who "did the bedrooms," and who complained bitterly of the additional trouble given by Leo and me when we were at Dacrefield, and who was equally pathetic about the dulness of the Hall when we returned to school. "The young gentlemen be a deal of trouble, but they do keep a bit of life in the place, sure enough."



CHAPTER XXV

THE DEATH OF RUBENS—POLLY'S NEWS—LAST TIMES

When one has reached a certain age time seems to go very fast. Then, also, one begins to understand the meaning of such terms as "the uncertainty of life," "changes," "loss of friends," "partings," "old times," etc., which ring sadly in the ears of grown-up folk.

After my first half at Eton, this universal experience became mine. There was never a holiday time that I did not find some change; and, too often, a loss to meet my return.

One of the first and bitterest was the death of Rubens.

I had been most anxious to get home, and yet somehow, in less high spirits than usual, which made it feel not unnatural that my father's face should be so unusually grave when he came to meet me.