on with equable loud slowness. In happy ignorance of his
offspring's antics, father is still asking, or rather ordering, the
Almighty (for there is more of command than entreaty in his tone) to
prosper the High Court of Parliament. Also the Brat is now returning to
his place, travelling with surprising noiseless rapidity over the Turkey
carpet, dragging his shins and his feet after him. I draw a long breath
of relief, and drop my hot face into my spread hands. My peace, however,
is not of long duration. I am aroused again by a sort of choking snort
from Tou Tou, who is beside me--a snort that seems compounded of mingled
laughter and pain, and, looking up, detect Bobby in the act of deftly
puncturing one of her long bare legs with a long brass pin, which he has
found straying, after the vagabond manner of pins, over the carpet.

I raise myself, and lean over Tou Tou, to give the offender a silent
buffet of admonition, and, lifting my eyes apprehensively to see if I am
noticed, I meet the blear eyes of Sir Roger fixed upon mine. He has
turned his face quite toward me, and a ray from the candles falls full
upon it. _Blear!_ Well, if his eyes are blear, then henceforth blear
must bear a different signification from the unhandsome one it has
hitherto worn. Henceforth it must mean blue as steel: it must mean clear
as a glass of spring water; keen as a well-tempered knife; kindly as the
early sunshine.

I am so astonished at my discovery, that I remain for full two minutes
staring blankly at the object of it, while he also looks stealthily at
me; then, recollecting my manners, I burrow my face into my
chair-bottom, and so remain until mother's gentle Amen, and a noise of
shuffling and scrambling to their feet on the part of the congregation,
tell me that the end has come.

We all go up to father, and coldly and stiffly kiss him. While I am
waiting for my turn to receive our parent's chilly salute, I steal a
second glance at our guest. Yes, he is old certainly. Despite the youth
of his eyes, despite the uprightness, the utter freedom from superfluous
flesh--from the ugly shaky bulkiness of age--in his tall and stalwart
figure, still he is old--old in the eyes of nineteen--as old as father,
perhaps--though in much better preservation--forty-eight or forty-nine;
for is not his hair iron-gray, and his heavy mustache, and the thick and
silky beard that falls on his broad breast, are they not iron-gray too?
I have dropped my small