‘If I remember right, my dear,’ interposed his aunt, ’you wanted no work to be done on any saint’s-day.  Was there not a scheme that Mr. Holdsworth called the cricket cure!’

’That may yet be.  No one knows the good a few free days would do the poor.  But I developed my plan too rapidly!  I’ll try again for their church-going on Good Friday.’

‘I think you ought to succeed there.’

’I know how it will be.  My father will ring, propound the matter to Frampton; the answer will be, ‘Quite impracticable, my Lord,’ and there will be an end of it.’

‘Perhaps not.  At least it will have been considered,’ said Mary.

‘True,’ said Louis; ’but you little know what it is to have a Frampton!  If he be a fair sample of prime ministers, no wonder Princes of Wales go into the opposition!’

‘I thought Frampton was a very valuable superior servant.’

’Exactly so.  That is the worst of it.  He is supreme authority, and well deserves it.  When la Grande Mademoiselle stood before the gates of Orleans calling to the sentinel to open them, he never stirred a step, but replied merely with profound bows.  That is my case.  I make a request, am answered, ‘Yes, my Lord;’ find no results, repeat the process, and at the fourth time am silenced with, ’Quite impracticable my Lord.’’

‘Surely Frampton is respectful?’

’It is his very essence.  He is a thorough aristocrat, respecting himself, and therefore respecting all others as they deserve.  He respects a Viscount Fitzjocelyn as an appendage nearly as needful as the wyverns on each side of the shield; but as to the individual holding that office, he regards him much as he would one of the wyverns with a fool’s-cap on.’

And with those words, Fitzjocelyn had sprung into the hedge to gather the earliest willow-catkins, and came down dilating on their silvery, downy buds and golden blossoms, and on the pleasure they would give Miss Faithfull, till Mary, who had been beginning to compassionate him, was almost vexed to think her pity wasted on grievances of mere random talk.

Warm and kindly was his greeting of his aunt’s good old servant, Jane Beckett, whom Mary was well pleased to meet as one of the kind friends of her childhood.  The refinement that was like an atmosphere around Mrs. Frost, seemed to have extended even to her servants; for Jane, though she could hardly read, and carried her accounts in her head, had manners of a gentle warmth and propriety that had a grace of their own, even in her racy, bad grammar; and there was no withstanding the merry smile that twitched up one side of her mouth, while her eyes twinkled in the varied moods prompted by an inexhaustible fund of good temper, sympathy, and affection, but the fulness of her love was for the distant ‘Master Oliver,’ whose young nursery-maid she had been.  Her eyes winked between tears and smiles when she heard that Miss Mary had seen him but five months ago, and she inquired after him, gloried in his prosperity, and talked of his coming home, with far less reserve than his mother had done.