up out of the overshadowed road, like dwarfs out of a
fairy tale, covered with flowers, and leading our carriage with its odd
occupant inside.

Keziah, who had been counting the days to the holidays, ran down first
to meet us, beaming with pleasure; though when Jack, in the futile
attempt to play leap-frog with her against her will, damaged her cap,
and clung to her neck till I thought she would have been throttled, she
indignantly declared that, "Now the young gentlemen was home there was
an end of peace for everybody, choose who they might be."

CHAPTER XXIII.

I CORRESPOND WITH THE MAJOR--MY COLLECTION--OCCUPATIONS--MADAME
AGAIN--FETE DE VILLAGE--THE BRITISH HOORAY.

I wrote to my old friends and relatives, with a full account of my new
home. Rather a comically-expressed account too, I fancy, from the bits
Uncle Buller used to quote in after years. I got charming letters from
him, piquant with his dry humour, and full of affection. Matilda
generally added a note also; and Aunt Theresa always sent love and
kisses in abundance, to atone for being too busy to write by that post.

The fonder I grew of the Arkwrights, the better I seemed to love and
understand Uncle Buller. Apart as we were, we had now a dozen interests
in common--threads of those intellectual ties over which the changes and
chances of this mortal life have so little power.

My sympathy was real, as well as ready, when the Major discovered a new
insect, almost invisible by the naked eye, which thenceforward bore the
terrible specific name of _Bulleriana_, suggesting a creature certainly
not less than a rhinoceros, and surrounding the Major's name with
something of the halo of immortality. He was equally glad to hear of
Jack's beetles and of my fresh-water shells. I had taken to the latter
as being "the only things not yet collected by somebody or other in the
house;" and I became so infatuated in the pursuit that I used to get up
at four o'clock in the morning to search the damp places and
water-herbage by the river, it being emphatically "the early bird who
catches" snails. After his great discovery, the Major constantly asked
if I had found a specimen of _Helix Vandaleuriana_ yet. It was a joke
between us--that new shell that I was to discover!

I have an old letter open by me now, in which, writing of the
Arkwrights, he says, "Your dear father's daughter could have no better
home." And, as I read, my father's last hours come back before