ou like him? I always
thought so; and you will like him now?"

"I hope so," said Sir Tom.

Then a slight gleam of anxiety came into Lucy's eyes. This seemed the
only shape in which evil could come to her, and with one of those
forewarnings of Nature always prone to alarm, which come when we are
most happy, she looked wistfully at her husband, saying nothing, but
with an anxious question and prayer combined in her look. He smiled at
her, laying his hand upon her head, which was one of his caressing ways,
for Lucy, not an imposing person in any particular, was short, and Sir
Tom was tall.

"Does that frighten you, Lucy? I shall like him for your sake, if not
for his own, never fear."

"That is kind," she said, "but I want you to like him for his own sake.
Indeed, I should like you if you would, Tom," she added almost timidly,
"to like him for your own. Perhaps you think that is presuming, as if
he, a little boy, could be anything to you; but I almost think that is
the only real way--if you know what I mean."

"Now this is humbling," said Sir Tom, "that one's wife should consider
one too dull to know what she means. You are quite right, and a complete
philosopher, Lucy. I will like the boy for my own sake. I always did
like him, as you say. He was the quaintest little beggar, an old man
and a child in one. But it would have been bad for him had you kept on
cultivating him in that sort of hot-house atmosphere. It was well for
Jock, whatever it might be for you, that I arrived in time."

Lucy pondered for a little without answering; and then she said, "Why
should it be considered so necessary for a boy to be sent away from
home?"

"Why!" cried Sir Tom, in astonishment; and then he added, laughingly,
"It shows your ignorance, Lucy, to ask such a question. He must be sent
to school, and there is an end of it. There are some things that are
like axioms in Euclid, though you don't know very much about that--they
are made to be acted upon, not to be discussed. A boy must go to
school."

"But why?" said Lucy undaunted. "That is no answer." She was
untrammelled by any respect for Euclid, and would have freely questioned
the infallibility of an axiom, with a courage such as only ignorance
possesses. She was thinking not only of Jock, but had an eye to distant
contingencies, when there might be question of a still more precious
boy. "God," she said, reverentially, "must have meant surely that the
father and mother should h