"PRAY how do you like your new schoolfellow, Sir Francis Vere?" said Mr. Stanley to his young son Charles, as they were sauntering rather than walking in the noble park which surrounds his fine old seat of Stanley Hall, on a bright April morning; "his grandmother speaks of him as a lad of high promise."

"Of high promise, does she, sir? Whew!" quoth master Charles, whistling to a large spaniel, and beating the sedges round a fine piece of water, by the edge of which they stood. "A lad of promise! Whew! Heigh, Dash! Heigh! One may be sure there are teal or wild ducks here by Dash's action. Heigh, Dash! Heigh!" continued master Stanley. "And so his grandmamma speaks of Vere as a lad of promise? Whew, Dash! There's a fine fellow!" Now master Charles Stanley was a

VOL. II.

boy still under eleven; but being clever, bold, and spirited, an old denizen of a public school, and encouraged to talk freely at home, he spoke with a decision and freedom not very usual at his age, thus exhibiting to his excellent father, and by exhibiting enabling him to correct, the rash judgments of inexperience, and the petulant decisions of a presumptuous though generous character. În the present instance, Mr. Stanley was a good deal amused by the manner in which his son had contrived to intimate his dissent from the opinion of the good old lady Vere, and when Charles repeated, "a lad of high promise, indeed! Whew, Dash! Whew!" he replied at once to his insinuation, "And why not a boy of promise, Charles?"

"Because, sir, he's so much more like a girl. You never saw such a minc

Q

ing, blushing, delicate personage as it is in all your life; afraid of getting wet in the feet lest he should catch cold, or of going without his hat lest he should spoil his complexion. He wraps half a dozen silk handkerchiefs about his neck because he is subject to sore throats; wears kid gloves at cricket for fear his hands should chap; and wraps up his feet in flannel socks because he once had a chilblain. A promising boy, indeed! Why, sir, his grandmother herself could not be a greater coddle in her own venerable person, than this precious sprig of the baronetage, Sir Francis Vere."

Mr. Stanley smiled, in spite of himself. "You'll come to kid gloves some time or other, master Charles; for, as rough and red as those paws of yours are now, one may trust to the instinct of eighteen for that foppery. But eleven is rather early."

"Besides, sir," continued Charles, "he sports a dressing-box as large as my trunk, full of almond paste and violet soap, and eau de Cologne, and oil for the hair, and all manner of essences, so that one may smell him half a mile off; and that dear part of himself, his cambric handkerchief, was tossed out of the school, only last week, by Dr. K., because it half poisoned him by stinking of otto of roses. I hope I shall never come to that, sir, even if I do turn out a coxcomb at eighteen."

"There is no telling, Charles," replied his father. "I think you a very promising subject for any folly that may happen at that time to be the fashion. But this poor boy! What a life he must lead amongst you. And how entirely he owes his effeminacy to the accident of his being brought up amongst females !"

"I think not, sir, it is the nature of the creature. If you were to see him you would say so. All the grandmothers in the world would never make a manly lad of such a milk-sop." And Charles looked at himself as he stood struttingly flourishing a switch in one hand, and

66

caressing Dash-who, dripping with mud from the bank, was splashing him most manfully from top to toe, with the other he looked as if he would fain have said "all the grandmother's in the world would never have made a milksop of me." Apparently, Mr. Stanley read his son's thoughts. Ah, Charles, you know little of the effect of education, of habit, of constant association. You yourself, if exposed to similar circumstances, would have been just as likely to turn out a missy young gentleman as this poor child, Sir Arthur Vere-his very title will make against him. But talking of the power of association, core and sit down on this bank, and let Dash return to his dear sport of beating for wild fowl, and be quiet, if you can, for five minutes, whilst I tell you a story."

It

Now master Charles did not very thoroughly relish this invitation. seemed to him hardly manly to sit down for the purpose of listening to a story which, he suspected, was to be told to him for the sake of the moral; he obeyed, nevertheless, flumping himself down in the midst of a tuft of cowslips, whilst Dash, with equal comprehension and far more alacrity, returned to his search for the wild-duck's nest, the existence of which had become clear to his sagacity amongst the sedges and sallows on the water's edge.

"Nay, it is not much of a story either," said Mr. Stanley, when both were comfortably established on their soft and fragrant seat. "Not much that deserves the name of story, though a curious fact in natural history. Do you remember admiring Dr. Lyndsay's pretty little spaniel yesterday, and wondering at his name?"

"Romulus? Yes, sir. I do not know which I admired most, the venerable master, with his fine upright person and keen bright eye, his white bushy wig and three-cornered hat, and clerical coat, walking so alertly and speaking so kindly, and yet with something stately about him too, or the pretty little delicate creature, so white and shining, that