ion on my part, in order to ascertain whether it came off by
pulling or not! In all of which proceedings my friend greatly encouraged
me, so that the blame of my failure in the laws of etiquette lay at his
door.

Only Mrs. Groves was in the cottage when I rushed in eagerly upon the
morning in question. She was busy in culinary mysteries, but assured me
her master would be soon in, and, in the meantime, I was to make myself
at home; which I did at once.

"And your dear ma, how's she?" inquired the good lady presently,
settling a cover on a saucepan in a decisive manner, and sitting down
during a pause in her operations. "I saw her drive by yesterday; and
Susan told me she'd been at the school. A blessed time children have of
it these days, going to school; it's very different to what it was in my
time."

"Then you didn't go to school?" I asked, being privately of opinion that
she was rather fortunate as a child.

"Oh yes, sir, I went to school, but not like the schooling children has
now-a-days, with a high-born lady like your ma going herself to see
them;--our old dame, she teached us all she knew--to read, and mark, and
learn,--"

"And inwardly digest?" I suggested, as Mrs. Groves hesitated in her
enumeration of accomplishments.

But there was not time to satisfy me concerning this branch of her
education, for old George appearing at the moment, I flew to meet him,
and we strolled down to the water's edge together.

"I've been longing to see you," I exclaimed. "It's about Aleck, my
cousin Aleck, I wanted to tell you. He's coming, and uncle and aunt
Gordon, on Thursday week; that's only just a fortnight, you know."

Aleck was my only boy cousin, and ever since there had been a notion of
his coming to Braycombe, I had been thinking and dreaming of him
incessantly. My aunt Gordon had been in very delicate health, and the
doctors ordered foreign air and constant change for the summer months,
and a winter in some warm climate. There had been some hesitation as to
how my cousin, their only child, should be disposed of. He was not very
strong, and school life, it was feared, might be too great an ordeal for
another year; so my parents had written, offering that he should spend
that time at Braycombe, and share my tutor's instructions. The decisive
answer from my uncle had only just arrived, and I was in a tumult of joy
and excitement that it was in favour of my cousin's coming to stay with
us, and that the actual da