ow of the grey Cathedral in the rather grey and
grim old town of Misthorpe. Here, Angel and The Seraph and I were set down
one April morning, fresh from the country house, where we had been born;
our mother's kisses still warm, one might say, on our round young cheeks.

Unaccustomed to restraint, we were introduced into an atmosphere of
drabness and restraint, best typified, perhaps, by the change from our
tender, springy country turf, to the dry, blistered planks of Mrs.
Handsomebody's back yard. Angel, fiery, candid, inconstant; the careless
possessor of a beautiful boys' treble, which was to develop into the
incomparable tenor of today--next, myself, a year younger, but equally tall
and courageous, in a more dogged way--then, The Seraph, three years my
junior, he was just five, following where we led with a blind loyalty,
"Stubborn, strong and jolly as a pie."

Truly when I think of us, as we were then, and when I remember how we came
like a wild disturbing wind into that solemn house, I am inclined to pity
Mrs. Handsomebody.

Even when she sent us to bed in the colossal four-poster, in the middle of
the afternoon, we were scarcely downcast, for it was not such a bad
playground after all, and by drawing the curtains, we could shut ourselves
completely away from the world dominated by petticoats.

Then there was Mary Ellen, with her "followers," always our firm ally,
brimming with boisterous good health. Looking back, I am convinced that
Mrs. Handsomebody deserves our sympathy.

II

It was Saturday morning, and we three were in Mrs. Handsomebody's
parlour--Angel, and The Seraph, and I.

No sooner had the front door closed upon the tall angular figure of the
lady, bearing her market basket, than we shut our books with a snap, ran on
tiptoe to the top of the stairs, and, after a moment's breathless
listening, cast our young forms on the smooth walnut bannister, and glided
gloriously to the bottom.

Regularly on a Saturday morning she went to market, and with equal
regularity we cast off the yoke of her restraint, slid down the bannisters,
and entered the forbidden precincts of the Parlour.

On other week days the shutters of this grim apartment were kept closed,
and an inquisitive eye, applied to the keyhole, could just faintly discern
the portrait in crayon of the late Mr. Handsomebody, presiding, like some
whiskered ghost, over the revels of the stuffed birds in the glass case
below him.

But on a Saturd