een at
Kencote, and he was talking to them now, as Cicely joined them, of the
days when they were all young together. The two old ladies had quite
come to believe that they and their cousin Humphrey had spent a large
part of their childhood together, although he was fifteen years younger
than Aunt Ellen, and his visits to Kencote during his youth had been
extremely rare. Colonel Thomas had been too busy with his chosen
pursuits to have much time for interchange of social duties, proclaimed
himself a fish out of water, and behaved like one, whenever he went to
the house of his youngest sister, and had little to offer a lady of high
social importance and tastes in a visit to his own.

"Well, my dear," Lord Meadshire said to Cicely, as she approached, "I
was reminding your aunts of the time when we used to drive over from
Melford to Kencote in a carriage with postillions. Very few railways in
those days. We old people like to put our heads together and talk about
the past sometimes. I recollect my grandfather--_our_ grandfather," and
he bowed to the two old ladies--"Merchant Jack they used to call him
here, because he had made his money in the city as younger sons used to
do in those days, and are beginning to do again now, but they don't go
into trade as they did then; and he was born in the year of the Battle
of Culloden. That takes you back--what?"

"I recollect," said Aunt Ellen in a slow, careful voice, "when our Uncle
John used to come down to Kencote by the four-horse coach, and post from
Bathgate."

"Ah," said Lord Meadshire sympathetically, "I never saw my Uncle John,
to my knowledge, though he left me a hundred pounds in his will. I
recollect I spent it on a tie-pin. I was an extravagant young dog in
those days, my dear. You wouldn't have suspected me of spending a
hundred pounds on a tie-pin, would you?"

"Uncle John was very kind to us," said Aunt Laura. "There were six of
us, but he never came to the house without bringing us each a little
present."

"He was always dressed in black and wore a tie-wig," said Aunt Ellen.
"Our dear father and he were very dissimilar, but our father relied on
his judgment. It was he who advised him to send Edward to Bathgate
Grammar School."

"He would take a kind interest in our pursuits," said Aunt Laura, "and
would always walk with us and spend part of the day with us, however
occupied he might be with our father."

"Edward was very high-spirited as a child," said Aunt