e same moment a loud shriek proclaimed
that Lucilla, in hey final assault on the crab, had fallen flat on a
yielding surface, where each effort to rise sank her deeper, and Honora
almost was expecting in her distress to see her disappear altogether, ere
the treacherous mud would allow her to come to the rescue. But in that
instant of utmost need, ere she could set down the little boy, a
gentleman, with long-legged strides, had crossed the intervening space,
and was bearing back the young lady from her mud bath. She raised her
eyes to thank him. 'Humfrey!' she exclaimed.

'Honor! so it was you, was it? I'd no notion of it!' as he placed on her
feet the little maiden, encrusted with mud from head to foot, while the
rest of the party were all apparently cased in dark buskins of the same.

'Come to see me and my children?' she said. 'I am ashamed you should
find us under such circumstances! though I don't know what would have
become of us otherwise. No, Lucy, you are too disobedient for any one to
take notice of you yet--you must go straight home, and be cleaned, and
not speak to Mr. Charlecote till you are quite good. Little Owen, here
he is--he was quite led into it. But how good of you to come, Humfrey:
where are you?'

'At the hotel--I had a mind to come and see how you were getting on, and
I'd had rather more than usual to do of late, so I thought I would take a
holiday.'

They walked on talking for some seconds, when presently as the squire's
hand hung down, a little soft one stole into it, and made him exclaim
with a start, 'I thought it was Ponto's nose!'

But though very fond of children, he took up his hand, and did not make
the slightest response to the sly overture of the small coquette, the
effect as Honor well knew of opposition quite as much as of her strong
turn for gentlemen. She pouted a little, and then marched on with 'don't
care' determination, while Humfrey and Honora began to talk over
Hiltonbury affairs, but were soon interrupted by Owen, who, accustomed to
all her attention, did not understand her being occupied by any one else.
'Honey, Honeypots,' and a pull at her hand when she did not immediately
attend, 'why don't the little crabs get black legs like mine?'

'Because they only go where they ought,' was the extremely moral reply of
the squire. 'Little boys aren't meant to walk in black mud.'

'The shrimp boys do go in the mud,' shrewdly pleaded Owen, setting Honor
off laughing at