ightful
present instead of living gloriously upon a frightful past. If Mrs.
Windsor's guests were deprived of the latter triumph, they at least were
saved from the endurance of the former purgatory, and being for the most
part entirely unheroic, they were not ill content. Rusticity in the
rough they would decidedly not have approved of; rusticity in the smooth
they liked very well. Mrs. Windsor was wise in her generation. She was
distinctly not a clever woman, but she distinctly knew her world. The
two tall footmen were the motto of her social life. She and Lady Locke,
and the latter's little boy Tommy, came down from London by train in the
morning of the Wednesday on which the Surrey week was to begin. The
rest of the party was to assemble in the afternoon in time for tea.
Tommy was in a state of almost painful excitement, as the train ran very
slowly indeed through the pleasant country towards Dorking. He was a
plump little boy, with rosy cheeks, big brown eyes, and a very round
head, covered with exceedingly short brown hair. His age was nine, and
he wore dark blue knickerbockers and a loose, bulgy sort of white shirt,
trimmed with blue, and ornamented with a wide and flapping collar. His
black stockings covered frisky legs, and his mind at present was mainly
occupied with surmises as to the curate's little boys, with whom Mrs.
Windsor had promised that he should play. He was a sharp child,
interrogative in mind, and extremely loquacious. Mrs. Windsor found him
rather trying. But then she was not accustomed to children, possessing,
as she often boasted, none of her own.

"What are their names?" said Tommy, bounding suddenly from the window
and squatting down before Mrs. Windsor, with his elbows on his blue
serge knees, his firm white chin resting on his upturned palms, and his
brown eyes fixed steadily upon her carefully arranged face, which always
puzzled him very much; it was so unlike his mother's. "What are their
names? Are any of them called Tommy?"

"I don't think so," she replied. "One of them is called Athanasius, I
believe. I forget about the others."

"Why is he called Athanasius?"

"After the great Athanasius, I suppose."

"And who was the great Athanasius?"

"Oh--the well--well, he wrote a creed, Tommy; but you couldn't
understand about that yet. You are too young."

"I don't think you know who the great Athanasius was much, Cousin
Betty," said the boy, scrutinising her very closely, and trying to