g coat, seemed to watch with a bristling amazement the homely
diversions of an unaccustomed rusticity.

The little boys were all hopelessly in love with Lord Reggie, to whom
they had learnt, over the anthem, to draw near with a certain
confidence, but they gazed upon Amarinth with an awe that made their
bosoms heave, and could not reply to his remarks without drawing in
their breath at the same time--a circumstance which rendered their
artless communications less lucidly audible than might have been
desired. Amarinth, however, was serenely gracious, and might be heard
conversing about rustic joys and the charms of the country in a way that
would have done every credit to Virgil. Lady Locke could not resist
listening to his rather loud voice, and the fragments she heard amused
her greatly. At one moment he was hymning the raptures of bee-keeping,
at another letting off epigrams on the fascinating subject of
hay-making.

"Ah! dear boy," she heard him saying to the ingenuous Jimmy, "cling to
your youth! Cling to the haytime of your life, ere the fields are bare,
and all the emotions are stacked away for fear of the rain. There is
nothing like rose-pure youth, Jimmy. One day your round cheeks will grow
raddled, the light will fade from your brown eyes, and the scarlet from
your lips. You will become feeble and bloated and inane--a shivering
satyr with a soul of lead. The sirens will sing to you, and you will
not hear them. The shepherds will pipe to you, and you will not dance.
The flocks will go forth to feed, and the harvests will be sown and
gathered in, and the voice of the green summer will chant among the red
and the yellow roses, and the serenades of the bees will make musical
the scented air. By the ruined, moss-clothed barn the owl will build her
nest, and the twilight will tread a measure with the night. And the
rustic maidens will gather the shell-pink honeysuckle with their lovers,
and the amorous clouds will slumber above the exquisite plough-boy with
his primrose locks, as he wanders, whistling, on his way. Nature,
inartistic, monotonous Nature, will renew the sap of her youth, and the
dewy freshness of her first pale springtime, but the sap of your youth
will have run dry for ever, and the voice of your springtime will be
mute and toneless. Ah, Jimmy, Jimmy! cling to your youth!"

Jimmy looked painfully embarrassed, and helped himself to some pickled
walnuts which one of the tall footmen handed to him at th