ars to cut the holly hedge,'
exclaimed the boy, to the general amusement. 'Where's his hand?'

'My Mite shall have a bit of his funny hand,' said Mrs. Morton, and Ida
was dealing with the claw, when Eden interposed and said she did not
think her ladyship would wish Master Michael to have any.

'Just a taste, nurse, with some of the cream,' said Mrs. Morton. 'Here,
Mitey dear.'

'No, Master Michael, mamma would say no,' said Eden.

'Really, Eden, you might let Mrs. Morton judge in her own house,' said
Ida.

'Master Morton is under my charge, ma'am, and I am responsible for him,'
said Eden, respectfully but firmly. But Ida held out the claw, and
Michael made a dart at it.

Eden again said 'No,' but he looked up at her with an exulting roguish
grin, and clasped it, whereupon she laid hold of him by the waist, and
bore him off, kicking and roaring, amid the pitiful and indignant
exclamations of his aunt and cousin.

It may be that the faithful Eden was somewhat wanting in tact, by her
determined attention to the routine that chafed her hosts; but she had
been forced to come away without directions, and could only hold fast to
the discipline of her well-ordered nursery under all obstacles.

Master Michael was to have his cup of milk and run on the beach with the
nursery-maid long before the usual awakening of the easy-going household,
which regarded late hours as belonging to gentility; then, after the
general breakfast, his small lessons, over which there often was a
battle, first, because he felt injured by not doing them with his mother,
and next, because his hostesses regarded them as a hardship, and taught
him to cry over 'Reading without tears,' besides detaining him as late as
they could over the breakfast, or proposing to take him out at once,
without waiting for that quarter of an hour's work. Or when
out-of-doors, they would not bring him home for the siesta, on which his
nurse insisted, though it was often only lying down in the dark; nor had
Mrs. Morton any scruple in breaking it, if she wanted to exhibit him to
her friends, though if it were interrupted or omitted, the child's temper
was the worse all the afternoon.

'That nurse is a thorough tyrant over the poor little darling, and a very
impertinent woman besides,' said Mrs. Morton.

'A regular little spoiled brat,' Ida declared him.

While certainly the worse his father was said to be, the more his aunt
tried to spoil and indulge him, as a re