ts of the mighty. Verney Boscobel was
a delightful old house, but it might have been put, stables and all,
into White Ladies, and never found again. Fluff showed John the famous
Reynolds and Gainsborough portraits, the Van Dycks and Lelys, the
Romneys and Richmonds. Fair women and brave men smiled or frowned at our
hero wherever he turned his wondering eyes. After the first tour of the
great galleries, he turned to his companion.

"I say," he whispered solemnly, "some of 'em look as if they didn't like
my calling you--Fluff."

"I wish you'd call me Esme."

"All right," said John, "I will; and--er--although you didn't get into
the Torpids, you can call me--John."

"Oh, John, thanks awfully."

Ponies were provided for the boys to ride, and they shot rabbits in the
Chase. Also, they appeared at dinner, a tremendous function, and were
encouraged by some of the younger guests to spar (verbally, of course)
with the duke's Etonian sons. Fluff looked so much stronger and happier
that his parents, delighted with their experiment, were inclined to cry
up the Hill, much to the exasperation of the dwellers in the Plain.

When he left White Ladies John had learned one valuable lesson. His
sense of that hackneyed phrase, _noblesse oblige_, the sense which
remains nonsense with so many boys (old and young), had been quickened.
Little more than a child in many ways, he realized, as a man does, the
true significance of rank and wealth. The Duke of Trent had married a
pleasure-loving dame; White Ladies was essentially a pleasure-house, to
which came gladly enough the wit and beauty of the kingdom. And yet the
duke, not clever as compared to his guests, not even good-looking as
compared to the splendid gentlemen whom Van Dyck and Lely had painted,
_undistinguished_, in fine, in everything save rank and wealth, worked,
early and late, harder than any labourer upon his vast domain. And when
John said to Fluff, "I say, Esme, why does the duke work so beastly
hard?" Fluff replied with emphasis, "Why, because he has to, you know.
It's no joke to be born a duke, and I'm jolly glad that I'm a younger
son. Father says that he has no amusements, but plenty of occupation.
Mother says he's the unpaid land-agent of the Trent property."

John went back to Verney Boscobel, and repeated what Fluff had said, as
his own.

"It was simply splendid, mum, like a sort of castle in fairyland and all
that, but I _am_ glad I'm not a duke. And I expect th