spected and breakfast was done, Sir Joseph, who was fond of meetings, announced a conference in the library. Thither came Lady Harefel, having finished her talk with the housekeeper, and dutifully prepared to listen to matters less important. Thither came Miss Susan from the benevolent but perhaps impolitic occupation of watering plants in the sun. She had been struck by their thirsty looks. Sir Joseph, when the ladies entered, was turning over some books.

"My dear," said he to his wife, "there has never been any insanity in your family? Of course

not?"

"Dear me, no!" said Lady Harefel, reproachfully, as if she had been accused of an impropriety.

Thereupon the gentleman told how and where he had found his little nephew that morning. He spoke in his magisterial manner, and patronised some familiar and well-sounding phrases, together with an ancient proverb or two, which generally carried weight. In conclusion, he threw out a suggestion. "Perhaps on the maternal side, eh?" and touched his smooth forehead significantly.

"Poor Carry was excitable and nervous, certainly," said Lady Harefel, and never in my

opinion the right wife for my poor dear brother. You know Joseph, I have often said"

"Yes, dear, you have," said the magistrate, who liked to be chief speaker. "I thought there might be something-something on the maternal side, you know."

"Stuff and nonsense!" remarked Lady Harefel, blandly; "why do you say such horrid things, Joseph ?"

"I confess that I cannot make out that boy," said he, solemnly.

"A strange, complex character," murmured Miss Susan.

"A dear, good boy," said Lady Harefel, impatient of subtilty; "but too like his poor mother, full of fancies and feeling. But, dear me! if he has been lying about the house with nothing on but his shirt, he may have caught his death. I will go and see after him at once. A dose taken in time often

"No, Ellen; pray let me detain you a few minutes. Very likely you are right, and some medicine taken to-night- But I am most anxious to settle something about the boy. You think that there is merely an excess of feeling, eh?"

"I should say quite the contrary," said Miss

Harefel, softly. "To me there seems a want of warm feeling. No one can be fonder of Irvie than I am; and he often pains me by his coldness and hardness to me."

"Dear me! now you mention it, I think that is true. Upon my word, I have never noticed that he showed much affection for me."

"Of course, Irvie is very fond of us all," said Lady Harefel, softly but decidedly; "but," she added, "he has certainly too much feeling."

"Can there be too much feeling?" asked her sister-in-law, as if she expected no answer.

"Susan!" cried Lady Harefel in a tone of rebuke. She considered the question almost improper.

"Well, what is to be done with the boy?" asked Sir Joseph. "I have been looking into some of these books on education, and insanity, and that sort of thing, but I can't find much to the purpose. Irvine appears to me to be really a unique case. It would be far simpler if he were more like other boys; like our Ned, for example."

His wife's kindly face beamed with pleasure. "You can't expect to find many boys like Ned," she said; and added, after a pause, "I have been thinking that it was almost time for Irvie to go to school."

"Why, my dear, that is the very thing," said her husband; "of course it is. School is the thing to take the nonsense out of a fellow." Sir Joseph felt as if he had solved the hardest of problems. He repeated with gusto the sentence about taking the nonsense out of a fellow, and shut up his books.

Miss Harefel only sighed. She felt that another object of interest was about to be taken from her life. She had a keen sense of her neighbours' duty to herself, but had been long resigned to the selfishness of the world..

Thus it became an accepted fact in the family that Irvine Dale should go to school; and the president dismissed the conference with the consoling remark that, " after all, boys will be boys."

CHAPTER III.

IN ARDEN.

'We boys are all growing up together.
Who shall stay the morning star?"

MORNING after morning awoke in freshness and beauty. There was rain enough to keep the grass green and to quicken the ancient elms. There was enough water in the river, which spread itself in the new light. Wayward it runs beside the Eton playing-fields; wayward but charming, sweeping against the bank, laughing over the shallows, hurrying, pausing, curling back with countless dimples and eddies, but still running swiftly away. It has caught something of the boys' nature-impulsive and wilful, idle and keen, with quick succession of sun and shadow passing over the surface, tender and ashamed of tenderness, loving and mocking, quick to feel and quick to forget, full of little weaknesses but slowly growing in strength.