gorse from Picket Post to Stony Cross, that I do not know as
well as I know the friends round me to-night. I was born in the Forest,
and may I live and die and be buried here. I have just come back from
seeing some of the finest scenery in Europe; yet, without blushing for
my want of poetry, I will confess that the awful grandeur of those
snow-clad mountains did not touch my heart so deeply as our beechen
glades and primrose-carpeted bottoms close at home." There was a burst
of applause after Rorie's speech that made all the orchids shiver, and
nearly annihilated a thirty-guinea _Odontoglossum Vexillarium_. His
talk about the Forest, irrelevant as it might be, went home to the
hearts of the neighbouring landowners. But, by-and-by, in the
drawing-room, when he rejoined his cousin, he found that fastidious
young lady by no means complimentary.

"Your speech would have been capital half a century ago, Rorie," she
said, "and you don't arra--arra--as poor papa does, which is something
to be thankful for; but all that talk about the Forest seemed to be an
anachronism. People are not rooted in their native soil nowadays, as
they used to be in the old stage-coach times, when it was a long day's
journey to London. One might as well be a vegetable at once if one is
to be pinned down to one particular spot of earth. Why, the Twelve
Apostles," exclaimed Mabel, innocent of irreverence, for she meant
certain ancient and fast-decaying oaks so named, "see as much of life
as your fine old English gentleman. Men have wider ideas nowadays. The
world is hardly big enough for their ambition."

"I would rather live in a field, and strike my roots deep down like one
of those trees, than be a homeless nomad with a world-wide ambition,"
answered Rorie. "I have a passion for home."

"Then I wonder you spend so little time in it."

"Oh, I don't mean a home inside four walls. The Forest is my home, and
Briarwood is no dearer to me than any other spot in it."

"Not so dear as the Abbey House, perhaps?"

"Well, no. I confess that fine old Tudor mansion pleases me better than
this abode of straight lines and French windows, plate glass and gilt
mouldings."

They sat side by side upon the amber ottoman, Rorie with Mabel's blue
feather fan in his hand, twirling and twisting it as he talked, and
doing more damage to that elegant article in a quarter of an hour than
a twelvemonth's legitimate usage would have done. People, looking at
the pretty