s and changing prospects, there was always
a big, big figure, with kind eyes and strong arms, looming largely in
his recollection.

"If my father had lived, I know we should have been such friends,"
Malcolm would sigh to himself in his growing youth; and though his
mother never suspected it, he often looked at his father's portrait
that hung in her dressing-room, until his eyes were full of tears. "If
father had lived, I shouldn't have been so lonely and out of it all,"
he would say as he turned away with a quivering lip.

Mrs. Herrick tried to do her duty by the boy; but she was a busy woman,
and had no leisure to devote to his amusement. The long holidays were
more pleasant in anticipation to both mother and son than they proved
in reality.

In the working hive at 27 Queen's Gate there seemed no place for the
restless, growing lad. His mother was always shut up in the library,
where she wrote her endless letters and reports and added up her
accounts, and Anna was with her governess.

Malcolm would be put in Anderson's charge, the steady, reliable butler
and factotum, and introduced to all the sights of London--Westminster
Abbey and St. Paul's, the Tower, and the British Museum, the Zoological
Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's. Sometimes they went to Kew, or Richmond
Park, or took the steamer to Hampton Court. The nearest approach to
dissipation was an afternoon spent with the Christy Minstrels. Mrs.
Herrick would not hear of the theatre; but once, sad to relate, when
Anderson was indisposed, and the footman, a rather feeble-minded young
man, had been sent with Malcolm to see a panorama that was considered
interesting and instructing, Malcolm, by sundry bribes and many
blandishments, had seduced his guardian into accompanying him to Drury
Lane, where they sat in the pit, side by side, and watched with
breathless interest the never-to-be-forgotten pantomime of "Jack and
the Bean Stalk."

"They'll run you in for this, Master Malcolm," Charles had observed
ruefully, as they hurried through the dark streets. "If I lose my place
it will be all along of you, and it is a good place too, though Mr.
Anderson is a bit down on one." But, strange to say, they escaped
scot-free. Mrs. Herrick had not returned from a monster meeting at St.
James's Hall, and Anderson had retired to bed to nurse his cold.
Malcolm confided the whole story of his escapade to Anna, and she had
wept with grief and dismay. "Oh, Mally, how wicked of Charle