“An’ what, Uncle Porges?”

“Beautiful, nephew.”

“Oh!  Do you think she’s—­really beautiful?” demanded Small Porges.

“I’m afraid I do,” Bellew confessed.

“So does Mr. Cassilis,—­I heard him tell her so once—­in the orchard.”

“Hum!” said Bellew.

“Ah! but you ought to see her when she comes to tuck me up at night, with her hair all down, an’ hanging all about her—­like a shiny cloak, you know.”

“Hum!” said Bellew.

“Please Uncle Porges,” said Georgy, turning to look up at him, “what makes you hum so much this morning?”

“I was thinking, my Porges.”

“’Bout my Auntie Anthea?”

“I do admit the soft impeachment, sir.”

“Well, I’m thinking too.”

“What is it, old chap?”

“I’m thinking we ought to begin to find that fortune for her after breakfast.”

“Why, it isn’t quite the right season for fortune hunting, yet—­at least, not in Arcadia,” answered Bellew, shaking his head.

“Oh!—­but why not?”

“Well, the moon isn’t right, for one thing.”

“The moon!” echoed Small Porges.

“Oh yes,—­we must wait for a—­er—­a Money Moon, you know,—­surely you’ve heard of a Money Moon?”

“’Fraid not,” sighed Small Porges regretfully, “but—­I’ve heard of a Honey-moon—­”

“They’re often much the same!” nodded Bellew.

“But when will the Money Moon come, an’—­how?”

“I can’t exactly say, my Porges, but come it will one of these fine nights.  And when it does we shall know that the fortune is close by, and waiting to be found.  So, don’t worry your small head about it,—­just keep your eye on your uncle.”

Betimes they came in to breakfast where Anthea awaited them at the head of the table.  Then who so demure, so gracious and self-possessed, so sweetly sedate as she.  But the Cavalier in the picture above the carved mantel, versed in the ways of the world, and the pretty tricks and wiles of the Beau Sex Feminine, smiled down at Bellew with an expression of such roguish waggery as said plain as words:  “We know!” And Bellew, remembering a certain pair of slender ankles that had revealed themselves in their hurried flight, smiled back at the cavalier, and it was all he could do to refrain from winking outright.

CHAPTER VIII

Which tells of Miss Priscilla, of peaches, and of Sergeant Appleby late of the 19th Hussars

Small Porges was at his lessons.  He was perched at the great oak table beside the window, pen in hand, and within easy reach of Anthea who sat busied with her daily letters and accounts.  Small Porges was laboriously inscribing in a somewhat splashed and besmeared copy-book the rather surprising facts that: 

A stitch in time, saves nine. 9.

That: 

The Tagus, a river in Spain.  R.