nd unscrupulous you never could tell what they might
not do next."

Once, when Dickie was about six years old, Colonel St. Quentin brought
his young wife and two little girls to stay at Brockhurst. Katherine
had a great regard for her cousin, yet the visit was never repeated. On
the flat poor Dick could manage fairly well, his strangely shod feet
traveling laboriously along in effort after rapidity; his hands hastily
outstretched now and again to lay hold of door-jamb or table-edge,
since his balance was none of the securest. But in that delightfully
varied journey from the nursery, by way of his mother's bed-room, the
Chapel-Room next door, the broad stair-head,--with its carven
balusters, shiny oak flooring, and fine landscapes by Claude and
Hobbema,--the state drawing-room and libraries, to that America of his
childish dreams, that country of magnificent distances and large
possibility of discovery, the Long Gallery, he was speedily distanced
by the three-year-old Betty, let alone her six-year-old sister Honoria,
a tall, slim, little maiden, daintily high-bred of face and fleet of
foot as a hind. This was bad enough. But the stairways afforded yet
more afflicting experiences--the descent of even the widest and
shallowest flights presented matter of insuperable difficulty; while
the ascent was only to be achieved by recourse to all-fours, against
the ignominy of which mode of progression Dickie's soul revolted. And
so the little boy concluded that he did not care much about little
girls; and confided to his devoted play-fellow Clara--Mrs. Denny's
niece and sometime second still-room maid, now promoted, on account of
her many engaging qualities, to be Dickie's special attendant--that:--

"They went so quick, they always left him behind, and it was not nice
to be left behind, and it was very rude of them to do it; didn't Clara
think so?"

And Clara, as in duty and affection bound, not without additional
testimony in a certain dimness of her pretty, honest, brown eyes, did
indeed very much think so. It followed, therefore, that Dickie saw the
St. Quentin family drive away, nurses and luggage complete, quite
unmoved. And returned with satisfaction and renewed self-confidence to
the exclusive society of all those dear grown-up people--gentle and
simple--who were never guilty of leaving him behind; to that of Camp,
the old, white bulldog, and young Camp, his son and heir, who, if they
so far forgot themselves as to run a