ir charge, yet where shall we find communities more
universally respected? Take the cuckoo again--is there any bird which we
like better?"

I saw he was running off from his own reminiscences and tried to bring
him back to them, but it was no use.

"What a fool," he said, "a man is to remember anything that happened more
than a week ago unless it was pleasant, or unless he wants to make some
use of it.

"Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during
their own lifetime. A man at five and thirty should no more regret not
having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born
a prince of the blood. He might be happier if he had been more fortunate
in childhood, but, for aught he knows, if he had, something else might
have happened which might have killed him long ago. If I had to be born
again I would be born at Battersby of the same father and mother as
before, and I would not alter anything that has ever happened to me."

The most amusing incident that I can remember about his childhood was
that when he was about seven years old he told me he was going to have a
natural child. I asked him his reasons for thinking this, and he
explained that papa and mamma had always told him that nobody had
children till they were married, and as long as he had believed this of
course he had had no idea of having a child, till he was grown up; but
not long since he had been reading Mrs Markham's history of England and
had come upon the words "John of Gaunt had several natural children" he
had therefore asked his governess what a natural child was--were not all
children natural?

"Oh, my dear," said she, "a natural child is a child a person has before
he is married." On this it seemed to follow logically that if John of
Gaunt had had children before he was married, he, Ernest Pontifex, might
have them also, and he would be obliged to me if I would tell him what he
had better do under the circumstances.

I enquired how long ago he had made this discovery. He said about a
fortnight, and he did not know where to look for the child, for it might
come at any moment. "You know," he said, "babies come so suddenly; one
goes to bed one night and next morning there is a baby. Why, it might
die of cold if we are not on the look-out for it. I hope it will be a
boy."

"And you have told your governess about this?"

"Yes, but she puts me off and does not help me: she says it will not come
for