spent by Mr. Egremont in the pursuit of
comparative health, at Buxton, Bagneres, and Biarritz, during which his
daughter could do little but attend to him and to little Alwyn. The boy
had been enough left to her and nurse during his father's acute illness
to have become more amenable. He was an affectionate child,
inheriting, with his mother's face, her sweetness and docility of
nature, and he was old enough to be a good deal impressed with the fact
that he had made poor papa so ill by teasing him to stand in the cold.
Mr. Egremont was not at rest without a sight of the child every day, if
only for a moment, and the helplessness and suffering had awed the
little fellow a good deal. It was touching to see him pause when
galloping about the house when he went past the sick-room, and hush his
merry voice of his own accord.

And in the journeys, when his father's invalided state would have made
a fractious or wilful child a serious inconvenience, his good temper
and contentment were invaluable. He would sit for hours on his
sister's lap, listening to whispered oft-told tales, or playing at
impromptu quiet games; he could go to sleep anywhere, and the wonderful
discoveries he made at each new place were the amusement of all his
auditors. Sister was always his playfellow and companion whenever she
could be spared from her father, and she had an ever-increasing
influence over him which she did her best to raise into principle.

Perhaps she never had a happier moment than when she heard how he had
put his hands behind him and steadily refused when Gregorio had offered
to regale him at a stall of bonbons forming only a thin crust to
liqueurs, which unfortunately he had already been taught to like.

'But I told him sister said I mustn't have them,' said Alwyn. 'And
then he made a face and said something in French about you. I know
'twas you, for he said "soeur." What was it?'

'Never mind, Wynnie dear. We had much better never know. You were
sister's own dear steadfast boy, and you shall kiss mother's picture.'

Nuttie had a beautiful coloured photograph of her mother, finished like
a miniature, which had been taken at Nice, in the time of Alice
Egremont's most complete and matured beauty. She had taught Alwyn to
kiss and greet it every evening before his prayers, and such a kiss was
his reward when he had shown any special act of goodness, for which, as
she told him, 'mother would have been pleased with her little