olours.

Among the friends of the family must be put first Uncle Chris, who was
Captain Avory's brother and a lawyer in Golden Square. Uncle Chris
looked after Mrs. Avory's money and gave advice. He was very nice, and
came to dinner every Sunday (hot roast beef and horse radish sauce).
There was an Aunt Chris, too, but she was an invalid and could not
leave her room, where she lay all the time and remembered birthdays.

Next to Uncle Chris came Mr. Scott, who was a famous author and a very
good cricketer on the lawn, and Mr. Lenox, who was private secretary to
a real lord, and therefore had lots of time and money. Both Mr. Scott
and Mr. Lenox were bachelors, as the best friends of families always
are; unless, of course, their wives are invalids.

Gregory, who was more social than Robert, also knew one policeman, one
coachman, three chauffeurs, and several Chiswick boatmen extremely
intimately. Robert's principal friend outside the family was a bird
stuffer in Hammersmith; but he does not come into this story.

The Avories did not go to boarding school, or, indeed, to any school in
the ordinary way at all; Mrs. Avory said she could not spare them.
Instead they were visited every day except Saturdays by Mr. Crawley and
Miss Bingham, who taught them the things that one is supposed to
know--Mr. Crawley taking the boys in the old billiard room, and Miss
Bingham the girls in the morning room. At some of the lessons--such as
history--they all joined. The classes were attended also by the
Rotherams, the doctor's children, who lived at "Fir Grove," and Horace
Campbell, the only son of the vicar. So it was a kind of school, after
all.

Horace Campbell had always intended to be a cowboy when he grew up, but
a visit to a play called "Raffles" was now rather inclining him to
gentlemanly burglary. William Rotheram, like Gregory, leaned towards
flying; but Jack Rotheram voted steadily for the sea, and talked of
little but Osborne.

Mary Rotheram played with a bat almost as straight as "Plum" Warner's,
and she knew most of the old Somersetshire songs--"Mowing the Barley,"
and "Lord Rendal," and "Seventeen come Sunday"--by heart, and sang them
beautifully. Gregory, who used to revel in Sankey's hymns as sung by
Eliza Pollard, the parlourmaid, now thought that the Somerset music was
the only real kind. Mary Rotheram had a snub nose and quantities of
freckle and a very nice nature.

"The Gables" had a large garden, with a shrubber