rs. I'm afraid you won't find Ernest, he's gone
back to school--but I dare say you're not too big to play with little
girls."

Jeremy felt some triumph at his heart.

"I'm going to school to-morrow," he said. But if he expected Mrs. Dean
to be pitiful at this statement he was greatly mistaken.

"Are you, indeed? Such a pity you couldn't have gone with Ernest--but
he'd be senior to you, of course... Good-bye. Good-bye. Give my love to
your mother," and she pounded her way along.

"She's a beastly woman anyway" thought Jeremy. "I wish I'd found
something to say to her. I wonder whether she knows I knocked Ernest
down in the summer and trod on him?"

But the sight of the High Street soon restored his equanimity. On other
occasions he had been pushed through it, either by the Jampot or
Miss Jones, so rapidly that he could gather only the most fleeting
impressions. To-day he could linger and linger; he did. The two nicest
shops were Mannings' the hairdressers and Ponting's the book-shop, but
Rose the grocer's, and Coulter's the confectioner's were very good. Mr.
Manning was an artist. He did not simply put a simpering bust with
an elaborate head of hair in his window and leave it at that--he did,
indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a
radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world
of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and
powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in
the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the
Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. Ponting was the
best established, most sacred and serious bookseller in the county. In
the days when the new "Waverley" was the sensation of the moment Mr.
Ponting, grandfather of the present Mr. Ponting, had been in quite
constant correspondence with Mr. Southey, and Mr. Coleridge, and had
once, when on a visit to London, spoken to the great Lord Byron himself.
This tradition of aristocracy remained, and the present Mr. Pouting
always advised the Bishop what to read and was consulted by Mrs. Lamb,
our only authoress, on questions of publishers and editions and such
technical points. For all this Jeremy, at his present stage of interest,
would have cared nothing even had he known it, but what he did care for
were the rows of calf-bound books with little ridges of gold, that made
a fine wall across the window with an old print of t