r yet fallen behind him. On Saturday,
he showed her what were his tasks for the week, and as soon as her rent
was repaired, she swung herself downstairs in search of him for this
purpose. She found him in the drawing-room, a pretty, pleasant room--its
only fault that it was rather too low. It had windows opening down to
the lawn, and was full of pretty things, works and knick-knacks. Ethel
found the state of affairs unfavourable to her. Norman was intent on
a book on the sofa, and at the table sat Mr. Ernescliffe, hard at work
with calculations and mathematical instruments. Ethel would not for the
world that any one should guess at her classical studies--she scarcely
liked to believe that even her father knew of them, and to mention them
before Mr. Ernescliffe would have been dreadful. So she only shoved
Norman, and asked him to come.

"Presently," he said.

"What have you here?" said she, poking her head into the book. "Oh! no
wonder you can't leave off. I've been wanting you to read it all the
week."

She read over him a few minutes, then recoiled: "I forgot, mamma told me
not to read those stories in the morning. Only five minutes, Norman."

"Wait a bit, I'll come."

She fidgeted, till Mr. Ernescliffe asked Norman if there was a table of
logarithms in the house.

"Oh, yes," she answered; "don't you know, Norman? In a brown book on the
upper shelf in the dining-room. Don't you remember papa's telling us the
meaning of them, when we had the grand book-dusting?"

He was conscious of nothing but his book; however, she found the
logarithms, and brought them to Mr. Ernescliffe, staying to look at his
drawing, and asking what he was making out. He replied, smiling at the
impossibility of her understanding, but she wrinkled her brown forehead,
hooked her long nose, and spent the next hour in amateur navigation.

Market Stoneborough was a fine old town. The Minster, grand with the
architecture of the time of Henry III., stood beside a broad river, and
round it were the buildings of a convent, made by a certain good Bishop
Whichcote, the nucleus of a grammar school, which had survived the
Reformation, and trained up many good scholars; among them, one of
England's princely merchants, Nicholas Randall, whose effigy knelt in
a niche in the chancel wall, scarlet-cloaked, white-ruffed, and black
doubletted, a desk bearing an open Bible before him, and a twisted
pillar of Derbyshire spar on each side. He was the founder of