lights he would have made it, was in
respectable order, and contained hardly anything obnoxious to his
taste; the schools were well built, properly officered, and the
children under such discipline that Rosamond declared she could no
more meddle with them than with her father's regiment.

The Rectory was at that moment level with the ground, and Julius
explaining the plans, when up came the senior curate. Mr. Bindon,
whom she, as well as Julius, greeted as an old friend, was the
typical modern priest, full of his work, and caring for nothing
besides, except a Swiss mountain once a year; a slight, spare,
small, sallow man, but with an enormous power of untiring energy.

Scarcely had Rosamond shaken hands with him, standing where her
drawing-room rug was to be in future days, when a merry whistle came
near, and over the wall from the churchyard leapt first a black
retriever, secondly a Skye terrier, thirdly a bull ditto, fourthly a
young man, or rather an enormous boy, who for a moment stood amazed
and disconcerted at the unexpectedly worshipful society into which
he had jumped!

"Ha! Herbert! is that you?" laughed Julius.

"I beg your pardon!" he breathlessly exclaimed. "I was just taking
the short cut! I had no idea--Here, Mungo, you ruffian!" as the
Skye was investigating Lady Rosamond's boot.

"Oh, I like him of all things! I am glad to welcome you to our
future house!" as she held out her hand to the Reverend Herbert
Bowater, the junior curate, a deacon of a fortnight's standing,
whose round open happy blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, merry lips, and
curly light hair, did not seem in keeping with the rigidly straight
collar and waistcoat, and the long black coat, at present
plentifully streaked with green tree-moss, while his boots and
trousers looked as if they had partaken of the mud-bath which his
dogs had evidently been wallowing in.

"Off! off!" were his words, as he shook hands with his rectoress.
"Get away, Rollo!" with an energetic shove of the foot to the big
dog, who was about to shake his dripping coat for the ladies'
special benefit. "I saw you arrive last evening," he said, in the
conversational tone of a gentlemanly school-boy; "didn't you find it
very cold?"

"Not very. I did not see you, though."

"He was organizing the cheers," said Mr. Bindon. "You shone in
that, Bowater. They kept such good time."

"You were very good to cheer us at all," said Julius, "coming in the
wake of the Squir