he extra ninepence.

Ger had a quick ear and could already pick out little tunes on the
piano with one finger, though, so far, he had found musical notation as
difficult as every other kind of reading.

But he took to the bugle like a duck to water, and on an evil day
someone in Woolwich had taught him the peace call, "Come to the
Cookhouse Door."

The inhabitants of Redmarley were summoned to the cook-house door from
every part of the village, from the woods, from the riverside, and from
the churchyard.

He played the bugle in the nursery and in the stableyard, he played it
in the attics and outside the servants' hall when the servants' dinner
was ready.

He was implored, threatened and punished, but all without avail, for
Ger had tasted the joys of achievement. He had found what superior
persons call "the expression of his essential ego," and just then his
cosmos was all bugle.

Not even his good-natured desire to oblige people was proof against
this overwhelming desire to call imaginary troops to feed together on
every possible and impossible occasion. He did try to keep a good way
from the house, or to choose moments in the house when he knew his
father was out, but he made mistakes. He could not discover by
applying his eye to the keyhole of the study door whether his father
was in the room or not, and, as he remarked bitterly, "Father always
sat so beastly still" it was impossible to hear.

He looked upon the Squire's objections as a cross, but the dread of his
father's anger was nothing like so strong as his desire to play the
bugle, and even the Squire perceived that short of taking the bugle
away from him, which would have broken his heart, there was nothing for
it but to frown and bear it--in moderation.

Mrs Grantly's very direct assault had made a small breach in the wall
of Mr Ffolliot's complacency; and a fairly vivid recollection of the
shilling episode inclined him to deal leniently with Ger while his
mother was away. He rang the bell furiously for Fusby whenever the
most distant strains of "Come to the Cook-house Door" smote upon his
ears, and sent him post haste to stop that "infernal braying and
bleating"; but beyond such unwelcome interruptions Ger tootled in peace.

Mary was lonely and the days seemed long; she saw no one but her
father, the servants, the two children and Miss Glover, the meek little
governess, who seemed to spend most of her time in hunting for Ger
among outhouses a