been a _very_ naughty boy, Cecil!" she exclaimed as her eyes
met his. "How could I have gone home to mamma if I had been obliged to
leave you behind?"

"But you needn't, you know; you could have tied me up in a bundle and
taken me back. Mamma would have known it wasn't your fault."

"I am not so sure of that, and you have made poor Charlie cry,"--drawing
the younger boy to her side.

"Charlie is just a baby," contemptuously.

"He is a better boy than you are." Silence.

"Auntie, do you think the gentleman who pulled me back was the old
gentleman's son?"

"No, I do not think he was."

"Why don't you, auntie?"

"I can hardly say why."

"I have seen that gentleman--the old gentleman--in Kensington Gardens,"
said little Charlie, nestling up to his aunt. "He spoke to mammy the day
she took me to feed the ducks."

"I think that is only a fancy, dear."

"No; I am quite sure."

"Oh, you are always fancying things; you are a silly," cried Cecil, now
quite recovered, and turning to kneel upon the seat that he might look
out, thereby rubbing his feet on the very best "afternoon" dress of a
severely respectable female, whose rubicund face expressed "drat the
boy!" as strongly as a face could.

The rest of the journey was accomplished after the usual style of such
travels when the aunt and nephews went out together. Cecil was
constantly rebuked and made to sit down, and as constantly resumed his
favorite position; so that he ultimately reached home with beautifully
clean shoes, having wiped "the dust off his feet" effectually on the
garments of his fellow-passengers, while his little brother nestled to
his auntie's side and gazed observantly on his fellow-travellers,
arriving at curious conclusions respecting them, to be afterward set
forth to the amusement of his hearers.

Leaving the omnibus at the Royal Oak, the trio diverged to one of the
streets between that well-known establishment and the Bayswater Road--a
street which had still a few trees and small semi-detached villas, with
front gardens left at one end, the relics of a past when Penrhyn Place
was "quite the country"; while at the other, bricks, mortar,
scaffolding, and a deeply rutted roadway indicated the commencement of
mansions which would soon swallow up their humbler predecessors.

At one of these villas, the garden of which was tolerably neat, the
little boys and their aunt stopped, and were admitted by a smart but not
over-clean girl, who welco