d borrowed from Mr. Squills. He would
stand an hour at a cottage door, admiring the little girls who were
straw-platting, and then walk into the nearest farmhouses, to suggest
the feasibility of "a national straw-plat association." All this
fertility of intellect was, alas! wasted in that ingrata terra into
which Uncle Jack had fallen. No squire could be persuaded into the
belief that his mother-stone was pregnant with minerals; no farmer
talked into weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So, even
as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding country, begins to cast a
hungry eye on his own little ones, Uncle Jack's mouth, long defrauded
of juicier and more legitimate morsels, began to water for a bite of my
innocent father.

CHAPTER III.

At this time we were living in what may be called a very respectable
style for people who made no pretence to ostentation. On the skirts of
a large village stood a square red-brick house, about the date of Queen
Anne. Upon the top of the house was a balustrade,--why, Heaven knows,
for nobody, except our great tom-cat, Ralph, ever walked upon the leads;
but so it was, and so it often is in houses from the time of Elizabeth,
yea, even to that of Victoria. This balustrade was divided by low piers,
on each of which was placed a round ball. The centre of the house was
distinguishable by an architrave in the shape of a triangle, under
which was a niche,--probably meant for a figure; but the figure was not
forthcoming. Below this was the window (encased with carved pilasters)
of my dear mother's little sitting-room; and lower still, raised on a
flight of six steps, was a very handsome-looking door, with a projecting
porch. All the windows, with smallish panes and largish frames, were
relieved with stone copings; so that the house had an air of solidity
and well-to-do-ness about it,--nothing tricky on the one hand, nothing
decayed on the other. The house stood a little back from the garden
gates, which were large, and set between two piers surmounted with
vases. Many might object that in wet weather you had to walk some way to
your carriage; but we obviated that objection by not keeping a carriage.
To the right of the house the enclosure contained a little lawn, a
laurel hermitage, a square pond, a modest greenhouse, and half-a-dozen
plots of mignonette, heliotrope, roses, pinks, sweet-William, etc. To
the left spread the kitchen-garden, lying screened by espaliers yielding