tood, lost in frowning thought until meeting his frank
smile, she laughed.

"You are dreadfully persistent!" she said, "and I know it is too
much,--but--we'll try to make you as comfortable as we can," and she
laid her hand in his.

And thus it was that George Bellew came to Dapplemere in the glory of
the after-glow of an August afternoon, breathing the magic air of
Arcadia which is, and always has been, of that rare quality warranted to
go to the head, sooner, or later.

And thus it was that Small Porges with his bundle on his shoulder,
viewed this tall, dusty Uncle with the eye of possession which is
oft-times an eye of rapture.

And Anthea? She was busy calculating to a scrupulous nicety the very
vexed question as to exactly how far four pounds per week might be made
to go to the best possible advantage of all concerned.

CHAPTER VI

_Of the sad condition of the Haunting Spectre of the Might Have Been_

Dapplemere Farm House, or "The Manor," as it was still called by many,
had been built when Henry the Eighth was King, as the carved inscription
above the door testified.

The House of Dapplemere was a place of many gables, and latticed
windows, and with tall, slender chimneys shaped, and wrought into things
of beauty and delight. It possessed a great, old hall; there were
spacious chambers, and broad stairways; there were panelled corridors;
sudden flights of steps that led up, or down again, for no apparent
reason; there were broad, and generous hearths, and deep window-seats;
and everywhere, within, and without, there lurked an indefinable,
old-world charm that was the heritage of years.

Storms had buffeted, and tempests had beaten upon it, but all in vain,
for, save that the bricks glowed a deeper red where they peeped out
beneath the clinging ivy, the old house stood as it had upon that far
day when it was fashioned,--in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Five
Hundred and Twenty-four.

In England many such houses are yet to be found, monuments of the "Bad
Old Times"--memorials of the "Dark Ages"--when lath and stucco existed
not, and the "Jerry-builder" had no being. But where, among them all,
might be found such another parlour as this at Dapplemere, with its low,
raftered ceiling, its great, carved mantel, its panelled walls whence
old portraits looked down at one like dream faces, from dim, and
nebulous backgrounds. And where might be found two such bright-eyed,
rosy-cheeked, quick-footed, deft