remarks, which were full of information on this important matter.

"Quite young, good-tempered--little boy so fond of him, nothing would
have induced them to part with him; but they were going abroad."

Which sounded well; but I suspected the parson of a good deal of
officious advice in a long sentence, of which I only caught the words,
"Can't begin too early."

I felt convinced, too, that I heard something about the "use of the
whip," which put me into a fever of indignation. Just as Mr. Andrewes
was riding off, my father asked some question, to which the reply
was--"Gray."

My head was so full of the tutor that I could not enjoy the stroll
with my father as usual, and was not sorry to get back to Nurse
Bundle, to whom I confided all that I had heard about my future
teacher.

"He's a nasty little man," said I, "not a nice tall gentleman like
Papa or Mr. Andrewes. And Mr. Andrewes saw him yesterday. And Mr.
Andrewes says he's young. And he says he's good-natured; but then what
makes him use whips? And his name is Mr. Gray. And he says the other
little boy was very fond of him, but I don't believe it," I continued,
breaking down at this point into tears, "and they've gone abroad
(sobs) and I wish--boohoo! boohoo--they'd taken _him_!"

With some trouble Nurse Bundle found out the meaning of my rather
obscure speech. Her wrath at the thought of a whip in connection with
her darling was quite as great as my own. But she persisted in taking
a hopeful view of Mr. Gray, and trusting loyally to my father's
judgment, and she succeeded in softening my grief for the time.

When I came down to dessert that evening I pretended to be quite happy
and comfortable, and to have nothing on my mind. But happily few
children are clever at pretending what is not true, and as I was
constantly thinking about "that dreadful tutor," and puzzling over the
scraps of conversation I had heard to see if anything more could be
made out of them, my father soon found out that something was amiss.

"What is the matter, Regie?" he asked.

"Nothing, Father," I replied, with a very poor imitation of
cheerfulness and no approach to truth.

"My dear boy," said my father, frowning slightly (a thing I always
dreaded), "do not say what is untrue, for any reason. If you do not
want to tell me what troubles you, say, 'I'd rather not tell you,
please,' like a man, and I will not persecute you about it. But don't
say there is nothing the matter when your