“Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil.  It is very well there are such places.”

“Yes, but not to be the hope of them.  It is my luck.  If my eldest uncle, who had toiled in a bookseller’s shop all his youth and reigned like a little king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, there he would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar of Church and State, and I should be a free man.”

“Won’t they let you go about, and see everything?”

“Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting.  They are no fools; if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, there would be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integument of rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more raw than I care to carry about.  After all, it is only a globe, and one gets back to the same place again.”

“Men have so many openings.”

“I’m not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would be worse for their hearts,” he said, with a sigh.

“There’s journalism, a great power.”

“Yes, but to put my name to all I could—-and long to say-—would be an equal horror to the dear folks.”

“Yet you are helping on this concern.”

“True, but partly pour passer le temps, partly because I really want to hear ‘The Outlaws Isle’ performed, and all under protest that the windmill will soon be swept away by the stream.”

“Indeed, yes,” cried Dolores.  “They hope to regulate the stream.  They might as well hope to regulate Mississippi.”

“Well-chosen simile!  The current is slow and sluggish, but irresistible.”

“Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud.”

“Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals,” said Gerald sadly.

“Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful,” said Dolores, “but one can’t live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my Aunt Jane, really the cleverest of any of us!  Or like Mysie, not stupid, but wrapped up in her classes, just scratching the surface.  Now, if I went in for good works I would go to the bottom-—down to the slums.”

“Slums are one’s chief interest,” said Gerald; “but no doubt it will soon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish—-”

“What?”

“That there could be a revolution before I am of age.”

“What’s that?” cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke.  “A revolution?”

“Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,” said Gerald lightly.

“Oh! you don’t really mean it.”

“Not that sort,” said Dolores.  “Only the coming of the coquecigrues.”

“They are in ’The Water Babies’,” said Primrose, mystified.

Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort of fellow-captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the ‘Censor’ and its fellows.  Love is not often the first thought, even where it lurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; and though Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea only worthy of her.  Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could not but communicate it to her sister, though adding—-