reakfast or bid another
adieu to his grateful friend, he hurried the genial Tom, who had enjoyed
himself extremely, to the station, and carried him down by express train
to Maxfield.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A CHURCHYARD COUGH.

When Mr Armstrong with his jovial charge arrived about midday at
Maxfield, he was struck with the transformation scene which had taken
place since he quitted it gloomily a day or two before.

The house was the same, the furniture was untouched, the ordinary
domestic routine appeared to be unaltered, but a sense of something new
pervaded the place which he could interpret only by the one word--
Oliphant.

The captain had made a touching entry--full of sympathy, full of
affection, full of a desire to spare his dear cousin all business worry,
full of the responsibility that was on him to take charge of the dear
fatherless boy, full of that calm sense of duty which enables a man to
assert himself on all occasions for the good of those committed to his
care. As for his charming daughters, they had floated majestically into
their quarters--Miss Rosalind a trifle defiantly, making no secret of
her dislike of the whole business; Miss Jill merrily, delighted with the
novelty and beauty of this new home, so much more to her mind than the
barrack home in India. And Roger, despite all his sinister
anticipations, found himself tolerant already of the new guardian, and
more than tolerant of his _suite_.

For somehow his pulses had taken to beating a little quicker since
yesterday, and when half a dozen times that evening he had heard a
summons down the landing to come and hang this picture, or like a dear
boy unfasten that strap, or like an angel come and make himself
agreeable, unless he intended his cousins to sit by themselves all the
evening as penance for coming where they were not wanted,--at all such
summonses Roger Ingleton had experienced quite a novel sensation of
nervousness and awkwardness, which contributed to make him very
uncomfortable.

"Why," said he, as he and his tutor greeted one another again in Mr
Armstrong's room, "why, it seems ages since I saw you, and yet it's only
yesterday. I wish we could all have come down together. Do you know,
Armstrong, I half fancy it's not going to be as awful as I expected."

"That's all right," said Mr Armstrong, who had already begun to
entertain a contrary impression.

"Oliphant seems civilly disposed, and not inclined to interfere; and the
g