the two ladies and lead them out into the courtyard, where
everybody was waiting, under the large awning, to hear the lions of the
day cheered as they came down the school steps. Bruce was leading the
cheers; he seemed to know everybody and everybody to know him, and as
group after group passed him, he was bowing and smiling repeatedly while
he listened to the congratulations which were lavished upon him from all
sides. Among the last his own family came out, and when he gave his arm
to his mother and descended the school steps, one of the other monitors
suddenly cried--

"Three cheers for the Head of the school."

The boys cordially echoed the cheers, and taking off his hat, Bruce
stood still with a flush of exultation on his handsome face, in an
attitude peculiar to him whenever he was undergoing an ovation.

"Pose plastique; King Bruce snuffing up the incense of flattery!"
muttered a school Thersites, standing by.

"Green-minded scoundrel," was the reply; "that's because he beat you to
fits in the Latin verse."

"How very popular he seems to be, Julian," said Miss Home to her
brother, as they stood rather apart from the fashionable crowd.

"Very popular, and, on the whole, he deserves his popularity; how
capitally he recited to-day," and Julian looked at him and sighed.

"And now, mother, will you come to lunch?" he said; "you're invited to
my tutor's, you know."

They went and took a hasty lunch, heartily enjoying the simple and
general good-humour which was the order of the day; and finding that
there was still an hour before the train started which was to convey
them home, Julian took them up to the old churchyard, and while they
enjoyed the only breath of air which made the tall elms murmur in the
burning day, he showed them the beautiful scene spread out at their
feet, and the distant towers of Elton and Saint George. Field after
field, filled with yellowing harvests or grazing herds, stretched away
to the horizon, and nothing on earth could be fairer than that soft
sleep of the golden sunshine on the green and flowery meadowland, while
overhead only a few silvery cloudlets variegated with their fleecy
lustre the expanse of blue, rippling down to the horizon like curves of
white foam at the edges of a summer sea.

"No wonder a poet loved this view," said Mrs Home. "By the bye,
Julian, which is the tomb he used to lie upon?"

"There, just behind us; that one with the fragments broken off by stupid