you if you would teach them how to manage the sails
properly, for sometimes dreadful shipwrecks occur."

"You must bring them to our house. I am very fond of little boys, when
they begin to forget to be shy, and let you become acquainted with
them."

"Well," said Lavender, "I don't know many of the boys who sail boats
in the Serpentine: you will have to make their acquaintance yourself.
But I know one boy whom I must bring to the house. He is a German-Jew
boy, who is going to be another Mendelssohn, his friends say. He is a
pretty boy, with ruddy-brown hair, big black eyes and a fine forehead;
and he really sings and plays delightfully. But you know, Sheila, you
must not treat him as a boy, for he is over fourteen, I should think;
and if you were to kiss him--"

"He might be angry," said Sheila with perfect simplicity.

"I might," said Lavender; and then, noticing that she seemed a little
surprised, he merely patted her head and bade her go and get ready for
dinner.

Then came the great climax of Sheila's southward journey--her arrival
in London. She was all anxiety to see her future home; and, as luck
would have it, there was a fair spring morning shining over the
city. For a couple of hours before she had sat and looked out of
the carriage-window as the train whirled rapidly through the
scarcely-awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful
landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the
bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock
glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in
many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams
or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more
beautiful--the sharp, clear picture, with its brilliant colors and
its awakening life, or the more mystic landscape over which was still
drawn the tender veil of the morning haze? She could not tell. She
only knew that England, as she then saw it, seemed a great country
that was very beautiful, that had few inhabitants, and that was still
and sleepy, and bathed in sunshine. How happy must the people be who
lived in those quiet green valleys by the side of slow and smooth
rivers, and amid great woods and avenues of stately trees, the like of
which she had not imagined even in her dreams!

But from the moment that they got out at Euston Square she seemed a
trifle bewildered, and could only do implicitly as her husband bade
her--cling