plenty of merriment, as he drew and measured at the very
scanty ruins, which were little more than a few fragments of wall,
overgrown luxuriantly with ivy and clematis, but enclosing some fine
old coffin-lids with floriated crosses, interesting to those who cared
for architecture and church history, as Mr. Dutton tried to make the
children do, so that their ecclesiastical feelings might be less
narrow, and stand on a surer foundation than present interest, a
slightly aggressive feeling of contempt for all the other town
churches, and a pleasing sense of being persecuted.

They fought over the floriations and mouldings with great zest, and
each maintained a date with youthful vigour--both being, as Mr. Dutton
by and by showed them, long before the foundation. The pond had been
left to the last with a view to the wellbeing of the water-soldier on
the return. Here the difficulties of the capture were great, for the
nearest plant flourished too far from the bank to be reached with
comfort, and besides, the sharp-pointed leaves to which it owes its
name were not to be approached with casual grasps.

'Oh Monsieur, I wish you were a Beau,' sighed Nuttie. 'Why, are you
too stupid to go and get it?'

'It is a proof of his superior intelligence,' said Mr. Dutton.

'But really it is too ridiculous--too provoking--to have come all this
way and not get it,' cried the tantalised Nuttie. 'Oh, Gerard, are you
taking off your boots and stockings? You duck!'

'Just what I wish I was,' said the youth, rolling up his trousers.

But even the paddling in did not answer. Mr. Dutton called out
anxiously, 'Take care, Gerard, the bottom may be soft,' and came down
to the very verge just in time to hold out his hand, and prevent an
utterly disastrous fall, for Gerard, in spite of his bare feet, sank at
once into mud, and on the first attempt to take a step forward, found
his foot slipping away from under him, and would in another instant
have tumbled backwards into the slush and weeds. He scrambled back,
his hat falling off into the reeds, and splashing Mr. Dutton all over,
while Monsieur began to bark 'with astonishment at seeing his master in
such a plight,' declared the ladies, who stood convulsed with cruel
laughter.

'Isn't it dreadful?' exclaimed Ursula.

'Well! It might have been worse,' gravely said Mr. Dutton, wiping off
the more obnoxious of his splashes with his pocket handkerchief.

'Oh I didn't mean you, but the wat