and squat below, could be so very high when you
came to go up it; but the glimpses of the country, through the little
loop-hole windows, were most inviting. At last, Aubrey, who was
foremost, pushed up the trap-door, and emerged; but, as Dickie followed
him, exclaimed, 'Here we are; but you ladies in crinolines will never
follow! You'll stick fast for ever, and Leonard can't pass, so there
you'll all have to stay.'

'Aunt Daisy will sail away like a balloon,' added Dickie, roguishly,
looking back at her, and holding on his cap.

But Gertrude vigorously compressed her hoop, and squeezed through,
followed by Ethel and Leonard. There was a considerable space, square,
leaded and protected by the battlemented parapet, with a deep moulding
round, and a gutter resulting in the pipe smoked by Ethel's likeness,
the gurgoyle. Of course the first thing Dickie and Aubrey did was to
look for the letters that commemorated the ascent of H. M., E. M., M.
M., in 1852; and it was equally needful that R. R. M., if nobody else,
should likewise leave a record on the leads. There was an R. M. of
1820, that made it impossible to gainsay him. The view was not grand
in itself, but there was a considerable charm in looking down on the
rooks in their leafless trees, cawing over their old nests, and in
seeing the roofs of the town; far away, too, the gray Welsh hills, and
between, the country lying like a map, with rivers traced in light
instead of black. Leonard stood still, his face turned towards the
greenest of the meadows, and the river where it dashed over the wheel
of a mill.

'Have you seen it again?' asked Ethel, as she stood by him, and watched
his eye.

'No. I am rather glad to see it first from so far off,' he answered,
'I mean to walk over some day.'

'Ethel,' called Gertrude, 'is this your gurgoyle? His profile, as seen
from above, isn't flattering.'

'O, Daisy, don't lean over so far.'

'Quite safe;' but at that instant a gust of wind caught her hat, she
grasped at it, but only saved it from whirling away, and made it fall
short. 'There, Ethel, your image has put on my hat; and henceforth
will appear to the wondering city in a black hat and feather!'

'I'll get it,' exclaimed the ever ready Dickie; and in another moment
he had mounted the parapet and was reaching for it. Whether it were
Gertrude's shriek, or the natural recoil away from the grasping hand,
or that his hold on the side of the adjoining pinnacle w