“I’ll promise not to molest him,” she said.

“Besides,” said Lance, “one can look at other people’s parishes more philosophically than at one’s own.”

He had begun to grow a little anxious about his boy, but presently from the garden, up from the cliff-path, the two bounded in-—little Felix with the brightest of eyes and rosiest of cheeks, and a great ruddy, white-beaded sea-urchin held in triumph in his hands.

“Oh, please,” he cried, “my hands are too dirty to shake; we’ve been digging in the sand.  It’s too splendid!  And they ought to have spines.  When they are alive they walk on them.  There’s a bay!  Oh, do come down and look for them.”

“And pray what would become of Aunt Cherry’s house, sir?  Miss Mohun, may I take him to make his paws presentable?”

“A jolly little kid,” pronounced Fergus, lingering before performing the same operation, “but he has not got his mind opened to stratification, and only cares for recent rubbish.  I wish it was a half-holiday, I would show him something!”

The General, who had a great turn for children, and for the chase in any form, was sufficiently pleased with little Felix’s good manners and bright intelligence about bird, beast, and fish, as to volunteer to conduct him to the region most favourable to spouting razor-fish and ambulatory sea-urchins.  The boy turned crimson and gasped—-

“Oh, thank you!”

“Thank you indeed,” said his father, when he had been carried off to inspect Fergus’s museum in the lumber-room. “’To see a real General out of the wars’ was one great delight in coming here, though I believe he would have been no more surprised to hear that you had been at Agincourt than in Afghanistan.  ‘It’s in history,’ he said with an awe-stricken voice.”

When Fergus, after some shouting, was torn from his beloved museum, Felix came down in suppressed ecstasy, declaring it the loveliest and most delicious of places, all bones and stones, where his father must come and see what Fergus thought was a megatherium’s tooth.  The long word was pronounced with a triumphant delicacy of utterance, amid dancing bounds of the dainty, tightly-hosed little legs.

The General and his companion went their way, while the other two had a more weary search, resulting in the choice of not the most inviting of the houses, but the one soonest available within convenient distance of church and sea.  When it came to practical details, Miss Mohun was struck by the contrast between her companion’s business promptness and the rapt, musing look she had seen when she came on him listening to the measured cadence of the waves upon the cliffs, and the reverberations in the hollows beneath.  And when he went to hire a piano she, albeit unmusical, was struck by what her ears told her, yet far more by the look of reverent admiration and wonder that his touch and his technical remarks brought out on the dealer’s face.