beneath his green fastness, before the
afternoon blushed into the lovers' hour. He returned into his
garden, and, climbing up the wall by means of the mantling ivy,
reached his chosen observation-post. Through curtains of greenery he
watched the arrival of a pair of lovers, and held his breath, as
they seated themselves beneath him.

They were an even more ridiculous couple than their kind usually
are. And, when the gentleman squeezed the lady, she laughed so
foolishly that Archie Pennybet was within an ace of forgetting
himself and heartily laughing too. It was worse still, when they
began the pernicious practice of "rubbing noses." For the operation
was so new and unexpected, and withal so congenial to Archie, that
he risked discovery by craning forward to study it. He watched with
jaws parted in a wide gape of amazement, and then said to himself:
"Well, I'm damned!" There is but one step (I am told) from rubbing
noses to the real business of the kiss. And it was when the
gentleman brought the lady's lips into contact with his own, and the
peculiar sound was heard in the lane, that Mr. Pennybet's moment had
come.

"Hem! Hem! Oh, I say!" he suggested loudly, and sought safety by
slipping rapidly down his side of the wall, scratching his hands and
bare knees as he fell.

This fine triumph had been at a cost. Archie surveyed himself. His
new suit was clearly disreputable. And, in his mother's eyes, the
one crime punishable by whipping was to make a new suit
disreputable. The more he studied the extent of the damage, the more
he felt convinced that, in the expiation of this potty little
offence, his body would be commandeered to play a painful and rather
passive part.

His brain, therefore, worked rapidly and well. It was more than
possible, thought he, that his mother's sympathy could be induced to
exceed her indignation. She was really an affectionate woman; and
this was the line to go upon. So he squeezed the scratches in his
knees to expedite the issue of blood, and bravely entered the house.

"Mother," he called, introducing suitable pathos into his tones,
"Mother, I've fallen all down the wall!"

This effective opening, should it seem successful, it was his
intention to follow up with seasonable allusions to his birthday.
But alas! one glimpse of Mrs. Pennybet's face when she saw his suit,
showed him the folly of remaining on the scene, and with the speed
of a fawn, he was out in the garden, and up an elm t