much rather you had both come up to me in London.
One can find something to do there, and there's something to see. I
can't think how you people manage to live down here."

"Oh! we find something to do, don't we, Harry?" said Philip, laughing.
But Harry was very busy with Neddy, who had taken it into his head to go
down a lane which led to the pound--a place where he had been more than
once locked up; and it was as much as ever the lad could do to stop him;
so Philip's question remained unanswered. "I say," continued Philip at
last, after they had been conversing some time, during which Master Fred
had been cross-questioning Philip as to his educational knowledge, and
giving that young gentleman to understand what a high position he
occupied at Saint Paul's School--"I say," said Philip, "can you swim?"

"No," replied Fred.

"Can you play cricket?"

"No," said Fred.

"Fish, row, shoot, rat, and all that sort of thing?" said Philip.

"No!" said the other. "I have always lived in London, where we do not
practise that class of amusement."

"Oh! come, then," said Philip, "we shall be able to teach you something.
Only wait a bit, and you'll see how we live down here. But here we
are; and there's Papa waiting for us under the porch."

As Philip said this, Sam had crawled down from his seat, opened a swing
gate, and led the pony into a garden through which wound a carriage
drive up to a long low house, all along the front of which extended a
verandah, the supports and sloping roof being completely covered with
roses, clematis, and jasmine, which hung in the wildest profusion
amongst the light trellis-work, and then ran up the sides of the bedroom
windows, peeping in at the lattice panes, and seeming to be in
competition with the ivy as to which should do most towards covering up
the brickwork of the pretty place; for it really was a pretty place,--so
pretty, that even Fred, who thought that there was nothing anywhere to
compare with London, could not help casting admiring looks around him.
All along one side of the gravel drive there was a tall,
smoothly-clipped hedge of laurels; while on the left the velvet lawn,
dotted all over with beds of scarlet geranium, verbena, and calceolaria,
with here and there rustic vases brimming over with blooming creepers,
swept down in a slope towards the park-like fields, from which it was
separated by a light ring fence. Right in front was another mighty
laurel hedge, that look