owing him
various curiosities with which I was familiar; then he sat down again,
and keeping Aleck at his side, told him that so long as he remained at
Braycombe he was to feel as much at home, and as welcome to the study as
I was, and that he was to try and trust him as he could his own father,
until we all had the joy of welcoming his parents home again.

"Famous chats we get here sometimes, eh, Willie?" he concluded,
appealing to me.

"_Rather!_" I answered emphatically, seating myself on the arm of his
chair, and looking over his shoulder. "Papa, shall you have time to
play with us this afternoon. It's a whole holiday. I want you to very
much."

"I fear not, Willie. I must be away all the morning. Peter the Great
will be at the door to carry me off in another minute, and I must keep
the afternoon for your uncle and aunt. To-morrow afternoon I will give
you an hour, only I stipulate you must have mercy upon your old father,
and not expect him to climb trees like a squirrel, or run like a hare."

"You know you're not an _old_ father, papa," I said; "and, Aleck, papa
can run quite fast--faster than anybody else I ever saw, and he climbs
better than anybody else. He's been up the tree I showed you in the
avenue."

"Whatever papa's qualifications may be," my father observed, "the end of
the matter just at present is, that Rickson is coming round with the
horses, and I cannot keep his imperial majesty waiting."

"What does uncle do?" inquired my cousin after we had been to the door
and had seen my father mount and ride away on Peter the Great.

"Papa! oh, he does quantities of things," I replied, somewhat vaguely.

"What kind of things?"

I proceeded to enumerate them promiscuously:--

"Why, he's a magistrate, and tries cases at Elmworth, and sends people
to prison; and he goes to a hospital twice every week at Elmworth, and
he goes to see poor people--we often have some from the hospital down
here; and he always has quantities of letters; and he reads to mamma;
and, do you know, he once wrote a book--"

I paused, not so much because I had exhausted the list of my father's
employments, as because I had named that achievement which of all others
filled me with the deepest awe and reverence. I could remember how, when
I was four years old, my mother had lifted me up to see a volume on the
counter of the great bookseller's shop at Elmworth, and had let me spell
through the name "Grant" on the title-page. I felt