farm that had ruined a dozen men in succession.
All this was very well; but what were they to make of his sudden
turning round and defending that superstition as the most beautiful
sentiment in human nature? It was, according to him, the sublimest
manifestation of filial love--the instinct of affection for the great
mother of us all. And then the flowers became our small sisters and
brothers; and the dumb look of appeal in a horse's eye, and the singing
of a thrush at the break of day--these were but portions of the
inarticulate language now no longer known to us. What was any human
being to make of this rambling nonsense?

It all came of the dress coat, and of his childish vanity in his white
wristbands. It was the first occasion on which he had ceremoniously
dressed for dinner; and Violet had come over; and he was as proud of his
high and stiff collar, and of his white necktie, as if they had been the
ribbon and star of a royal order. And then they were all going off the
next morning--Miss North included--to a strange little place on the
other side of the Isle of Wight; and he had gone "clean daft" with the
delight of expectation. There was nothing sacred from his mischievous
fancy. He would have made fun of a bishop. In fact he did; for,
happening to talk of inarticulate language, he described having seen
"the other day," in Buckingham Palace road, a bishop who was looking at
some china in a shop window; and he went on to declare how a young
person driving a perambulator, and too earnestly occupied with a sentry
on the other side of the road, incontinently drove that perambulator
right on to the carefully swathed toes of the bishop; and then he
devoted himself to analyzing the awful language which he _saw_ on the
afflicted man's face.

"But, uncle," said Amy Warrener, with the delightful freshness of
fifteen, "how could you see anybody in Buckingham Palace road the other
day, when you haven't been out of the house for months?"

"How?" said he, not a whit abashed. "How could I see him? I don't know,
but I tell you I did see him. With my eyes, of course."

He lost his temper, however, after all.

"To-morrow," he was saying, "I bid good-by to my doctor. I bear him no
malice; may he long be spared from having to meet in the next world the
people he sent there before him! But look here, Violet--to-morrow
evening we shall be _free_--and we shall celebrate our freedom, and our
first glimpse of a seashore, in Scotch whi