y of our visitors' arrival had been fixed.

George listened with every appearance of interest to my communication.

"I'm glad your cousin's coming, Master Willie, as you're pleased," he
said.

"But aren't you glad, too, for your own sake?" I asked. "It will be so
nice having him to play with us."

"Oh, I'll be pleased to see him, never fear for that," responded George.
"I knew his father when he was but a little fellow like yourself."

"Mamma calls me her _big_ boy," I threw in, disapprovingly. "But what do
you think Aleck will be like?"

"Well, sir, I should expect very much such another young craft as
yourself; or, now I come to think of it, perhaps a year older or so."

"Not a year," I replied; "ten months and a half. I asked mamma his
birth-day. Do you think he'll be as tall as me? because papa and mamma
say I'm tall for my age."

"His father stood six feet one the day he came of age. I daresay his son
will take after him," said George.

"And be as tall as that?" I inquired, feeling rather anxious, until
reassured, at the transformation of my cousin in prospect into a young
giant.

I suppose that few children had ever seen less of other children than I
had up to this time. There were but three gentlemen's houses in our
neighbourhood: the Rectory, where lived the elderly clergyman and his
wife, who had never had a family; the Elms, a country seat, where Sir
John and Lady Cosington and two grown-up daughters resided; and
Willowbank, another country place, occupied by a young married couple,
with one little baby. Elmworth, our nearest town, was seven miles off;
and this distance almost entirely precluded intercourse with any of the
families there.

In consequence of this, I had been completely without companions of my
own age up to this time. In books I had read much of children's
amusements with their companions; and although the perfect happiness of
my own home left nothing really to be wished for, if ever a wish _did_
occur to me for anything I had not, it was for a play-fellow and
companion somewhere about my own age; and now, when this wish of mine
was really on the eve of being realized, I was filled with vague dreams
and anticipations of all the delight which it was to bring to me. When
George and I had mutually agreed that my cousin Aleck--allowing for the
difference of age--might be reasonably expected to be somewhat taller
than myself, we sat down on the beach, and began to discuss certain
plans