do as much for you another time!"

"Thank you, Laura, as much as if you had, but I hope we shall never be
in such a scrape again! If Frank were here, he would put us both in mind
to thank a merciful God for taking so much care of us, and bringing us
safely home!"

"Yes, Harry! It is perhaps a good thing being in danger sometimes, to
remind us that we cannot be safe or happy an hour without God's care, so
in our prayers to-night we must remember what has happened, and return
thanks very particularly."

It was long past five before Harry and Laura reached Holiday House,
where Lord Rockville met them at the drawing-room door, looking taller,
and grander, and graver than ever, while Lady Rockville rose from her
sofa, and came up to them, saying, in a tone of gentle reproach,

"My dear children! you ought to return home before the dinner hour, and
not keep his Lordship waiting!"

The very idea of Lord Rockville waiting dinner was too dreadful ever to
have entered their heads till this minute; but Harry and Laura
immediately explained how exceedingly sorry they were for what had
occurred, and to show that it was their misfortune rather than their
fault, they told the whole frightful story of the mad bull, to which
Lady Rockville listened, as if her very hair were standing upon end, to
hear of such doings. She even turned up her eyes with astonishment to
think what a wonderful escape they had made; but his Lordship frowned
through his spectacles, and leaned his chin upon his stick, looking, as
Harry thought, very like a bear upon a pole.

"Pshaw!--nonsense!" exclaimed Lord Rockville impatiently. "The bull
would have done you no harm! He is a most respectable, quiet,
well-disposed animal, and brought an excellent character from his last
place! I never heard a complaint of him before!"

"It is curious," observed Laura, "that all bulls are reckoned peaceable
and tame, till they have tossed two or three people, and killed them!"

"I thought," added Lord Rockville, looking very grand and contemptuous,
"that Harry was grown more a man than to be so easily put to flight.
When a bull, another time, threatens to toss you, seize hold of his
tail,--or toss him!--or, in short, do anything rather than run away the
first time an animal looks at you. This is a mere cock-and-a-bull story,
to excuse your keeping me waiting almost a quarter of an hour for my
dinner!--you should be made guard of a mail-coach for a month, to teach
you pu