eadings and
often 'dressed up to please the children.' Sometimes of an evening he
would perform upon the piano, indulging in a series of broken chords
which he called improvisation, and upon these occasions he felt that he
was a kind and thoughtful master when he set the drawing-room door open
so that the servants might hear; and as his servants thought so too it
was all eminently satisfactory.

This morning, the beauty of the weather having inspired him to the part
of a schoolboy, he avoided a gate and leaped a small fence into the
meadow, and he waged boyish fun upon grave-faced Cyprian, who longed to
be fishing. He greeted his two gardeners with an air of holiday, and,
having waved his stick to them, he called out some hearty remarks about
the weather.

Alas! when the corner of the meadow was reached it was found that the
rubbish-heap had already been fired, and nothing of it was left but the
smouldering ashes. The canon wondered why people could not leave
things alone, and was inclined to blame mamma. She surely might have
known how much he enjoyed this sort of thing, and have asked the
gardeners to leave it to him.

His boyishness, however, could hardly be repressed this morning; and,
speaking to his fourteen-year-old son as though his age might be five
or six summers, he clapped him on the back and bade him 'Never mind; we
will go for a merry jaunt to the ruins instead, and have a regular big
affair, and you shall boil a kettle, and we 'll have tea.--What do you
say, mamma?' Mrs. Wrottesley replied with the enthusiasm that was
expected of her, and the canon, with a 'here we are, and here we go'
sort of jollity, conducted her indoors to write notes of invitation to
friends to join the picnic. The canon dictated the notes himself, and
generally finished with a playful word or two suitable to each
recipient; when he failed at first to hit off the perfectly happy
phrase Mrs. Wrottesley had to write the note over again.

Foiled of his morning's occupation the canon walked up to Bowshott
himself with Mrs. Ogilvie's card of invitation. Mrs. Ogilvie frankly
and without a moment's hesitation refused to be one of the party; a
picnic was in her eyes one of those barbarous, not to say indecorous
things which she classed with bathing in the open sea or trying on a
hat in a shop. Why should one sit on the ground and eat indifferent
food out of one's lap? Mrs. Ogilvie was too sorry, but it was
impossible; she had f