get him leave out.'

'I remember,' said Honor, with a sweet smile of tender memory, 'when to
me the merit of Saints' days was that they were your father's holidays.'

'Yes, you'll send me to Westminster, and be always coming to
Woolstone-lane,' said Owen.

'Your uncles must decide,' she said, half mournfully, half proudly; 'you
are getting to be a big boy--past me, Oney.'

It brought her a roughly playful caress, and he added, 'You've got the
best right, I'm sure.'

'I had thought of Winchester,' she said. 'Robert would be a friend.'

Owen made a face, and caused her to laugh, while scandalizing her by
humming, 'Not there, not there, my child.'

'Well, be it where it may, you had better look over your Virgil, while I
go down to my practical Georgics with Brooks.'

Owen obeyed. He was like a spirited horse in a leash of silk. Strong,
fearless, and manly, he was still perfectly amenable to her, and had
never shown any impatience of her rule. She had taught him entirely
herself, and both working together with a thorough good will, she had
rendered him a better classical scholar, as all judges allowed, than most
boys of the same age, and far superior to them in general cultivation;
and she should be proud to convince Captain Charteris that she had not
made him the mollycoddle that was obviously anticipated. The other
relatives, who had seen the children in their yearly visits to London,
had always expressed unqualified satisfaction, though not advancing much
in the good graces of Lucy and Owen. But Honor thought the public school
ought to be left to the selection of the two uncles, though she wished to
be answerable for the expense, both there and at the university. The
provision inherited by her charges was very slender, for, contrary to all
expectation, old Mr. Sandbrook's property had descended in another
quarter, and there was barely 5000 pounds between the two.

To preserve this untouched by the expenses of education was Honora's
object, and she hoped to be able to smooth their path in life by
occasional assistance, but on principle she was determined to make them
independent of her, and she had always made it known that she regarded it
as her duty to Humfrey that her Hiltonbury property should be
destined--if not to the apocryphal American Charlecote--to a relation of
their mutual great-grandmother.

Cold invitations had been given and declined, but this one was evidently
in earnest, and the conside