I assure you!" said the Colonel, gallantly. "Harry
Monmouth! takes me back forty years. Knew Roger, your father, well, Miss
Montfort. Great scholar; fine fellow! nose in his books all day long,
just like my brother Raymond; great chums, Roger and Raymond. I remember
once--ha! here we are!"

"Merryweather!" shouted the brakeman. The train drew up beside a little
wayside station. On one side of the track, a platform and a shed, with a
few barrels and boxes lying about; on the other, a long stretch of dark
blue water, ruffling into brown where the wind swept it.

The three travellers, emerging, found three persons awaiting them on the
platform. Gerald Merryweather was first, his hand on the rail, his face
alight with joy and eagerness; close beside him was another person, a
tall girl in gray, at sight of whom Peggy, who had been apparently
stricken dumb by the aspect of Colonel Ferrers, shouted aloud and
tumbled off the car-step, to the imminent peril of life and limb.

"Snowy! Snowy! is it really you?"

"You dear Peggy!" cried Gertrude Merryweather, taking her in her arms,
and giving her a hearty kiss. "I am _so_ glad! and this is Margaret--oh!
welcome, most welcome, to Merryweather! Dear Colonel Ferrers, how do you
do? it was so good of you to come! But where is Hugh? haven't you
brought him?"

Colonel Ferrers drew her a step aside.

"My dear Gertrude," he said, in a confidential tone, "there is no need
of my telling _you_ that Hugh is one of the most astonishing--I will say
_the_ most astonishing boy I ever saw in my life. Expected to come;
looking forward to it for weeks, greatest pleasure of the summer.
Yesterday morning, Elizabeth Beadle had an attack of lumbago; painful
thing; confined to her bed; excellent woman, none better in the world.
Never could understand why good people should have lumbago; excellent
complaint for scoundrels; excellent! well, the boy--his great-aunt, you
understand!--refuses to leave her. Says she likes to have him read to
her! Preposterous! I insisted, Elizabeth Beadle insisted, with tears in
her eyes; tears, sir! I mean my dear! Boy immovable; Gibraltar
vacillating beside him; tottering, sir, on its foundations. I had to
come away and leave him, perfectly happy, reading Tennyson to Elizabeth
Beadle. Ask somebody else to coerce a boy like that; Thomas Ferrers is
not the man for it. Where's my Cochin China Chittagong?"

"Jack?" said Gertrude, laughing. "He is behind the shed, with the