f the
story, 'Did he call the keeper?'

'Oh yes, the old beast! His name's Best, but it ought to be Beast! He
guffawed ever so much worse than she did!'

'Well, but who was it?'

And after he had tried to make her guess, and teased his fill, he owned,
'Mrs. Bury--a sort of cousin, staying with Lady Adela. She isn't half a
bad old party, but she makes a guy of herself, and goes about sketching
and painting like a blessed old drawing-master.'

'A lady? and not a young lady.'

'Not as old as--as Methuselah, or old Rolypoly there, but I believe she's
a grandmother. If she'd been a boy, we should have been cut out of it.
Oh yes, she's a lady--a born Morton; and when it was over she was very
jolly about it--no harm done--bears no malice, only Ida makes such an
absurd work about every little trifle.'

CHAPTER XV
THE PIED ROOK

Constance Morton was leaning on the rail that divided the gardens at
Northmoor from the park, which was still rough and heathery. Of all the
Morton family, perhaps she was the one who had the most profited by the
three years that had passed since her uncle's accession to the title.
She had been at a good boarding-house, attending the High School in
Colbeam, and spending Saturday and Sunday at Northmoor. It had been a
happy life, she liked her studies, made friends with her companions, and
enjoyed to the very utmost all that Northmoor gave her, in country beauty
and liberty, in the kindness of her uncle and aunt, and in the religious
training that they were able to give her, satisfying longings of her
soul, so that she loved them with all her heart, and felt Northmoor her
true home. The holiday time at Westhaven was always a trial. Mrs.
Morton had tried Brighton and London, but neither place agreed with Ida:
and she found herself a much greater personage in her own world than
elsewhere, and besides could not always find tenants for her house. So
there she lived at her ease, called by many of her neighbours the
Honourable Mrs. Morton, and finding listeners to her alternate accounts
of the grandeur of Northmoor, and murmurs at the meanness of its master
in only allowing her 300 pounds a year, besides educating her children,
and clothing two of them.

Ida considered herself to be quite sufficiently educated, and so she was
for the society in which she was, or thought herself, a star, chiefly
consisting of the families of the shipowners, coalowners, and the like.
She was pretty, wi