We made incoherent murmurs of assent.

"Name the Channel Islands, John."

"Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, and Herm," I replied glibly. So much had
I saved from the wreck of things ordained.

"Correct. Are you through your dinners then? You may pass out. Ah, your
nose, John; it looks quite red. What caused that?"

I said that I believed I had an inward burning fever. I had embellished
Mary Ellen's suggestion.

"I hope you are not going to be ill," she sighed.

It was not until Angel and I were back in the schoolroom, that we
discovered the absence of The Seraph. We turned surprised looks on each
other. Our junior seldom left our heels.

"I remember now," reflected Angel, "that, as he passed her, she stopped
him. I didn't think anything of it. What can she have found out? D'you
s'pose she's pumping the kid?"

We were left to our conjectures for fully a quarter of an hour. Then we
heard him plodding leisurely up the stairs. We greeted him impatiently.

"What's up? Did you blab? Whatever _did_ she say?" We hurled the questions
at him.

The Seraph maintained an air of calm superiority. He even hopped from one
floral wreath on the carpet to another, with his hands behind his back, as
was his custom when he wished to reflect undisturbed. He ignored our
importunities.

Angel, in exasperation, took him by the collar.

"You tell us why she kept you down there so long!"

Thus cornered, The Seraph raised his large eyes to our inquiring faces with
great solemnity.

"She kept me," he said, "to cuddle me, an' to give me this--" he showed a
white peppermint lozenge between his little teeth.

To _cuddle_ him. Was the world coming to an end?

"Yes," he persisted, "she kept me to cuddle me, an' she was cwyin'--so
there!"

Mrs. Handsomebody crying!

"It's about her dead brother, of course," said Angel. "That's why she
cried."

"No," said The Seraph, stoutly. "He was a _man_, an' she was cwyin' about a
little _wee_ boy like me, she used to cuddle long ago!"

_Chapter VI: D'ye Ken John Peel?_

I

Probably a little boy is never quite so happy as when he is worshipping and
imitating a young man. From this time on my hero was Harry, about whom so
fascinating an air of mystery hung that his lightest word was something to
be treasured. I pictured him, hungry and alone, perhaps brooding over the
Collect for next Sunday, or something of equal melancholy. I was always on
the watch for his tall, slender figure