ite whole pages out of Racine. Perhaps it was the French
lady who taught him. And he was not very happy at the Hermitage (though
grandpapa was a very kind good man), and he upset papa in a little
carriage, and was wild, and got into disgrace, and was sent to India?
He could not have been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking at him with her
honest eyes. Last week he went to the Drawing-room, and papa presented
him. His uniform of grey and silver was quite old, yet he looked much
grander than Sir Brian in his new deputy-lieutenant's dress. "Next year,
when I am presented, you must come too, sir," says Ethel. "I insist upon
it, you must come too!"

"I will order a new uniform, Ethel," says her uncle.

The girl laughs. "When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle,
and asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the same
question in my mind; and I thought when you went to the Drawing-room,
perhaps the King will knight him. But instead he knighted mamma's
apothecary, Sir Danby Jilks: that horrid little man, and I won't have
you knighted any more."

"I hope Egbert won't ask Sir Danby Jilks how many people HE has killed,"
says the Colonel, laughing; but thinking the joke too severe upon Sir
Danby and the profession, he forthwith apologises by narrating many
anecdotes he knows to the credit of surgeons. How, when the fever broke
out on board the ship going to India, their surgeon devoted himself to
the safety of the crew, and died himself, leaving directions for the
treatment of the patients when he was gone! What heroism the doctors
showed during the cholera in India; and what courage he had seen some
of them exhibit in action: attending the wounded men under the hottest
fire, and exposing themselves as readily as the bravest troops. Ethel
declares that her uncle always will talk of other people's courage, and
never say a word about his own; "and the only reason," she says, "which
made me like that odious Sir Thomas de Boots, who laughs so, and looks
so red, and pays such horrid compliments to all ladies, was, that he
praised you, uncle, at Newcome, last year, when Barnes and he came to
us at Christmas. Why did you not come? Mamma and I went to see your old
nurse; and we found her such a nice old lady." So the pair talk kindly
on, riding homewards through the pleasant summer twilight. Mamma had
gone out to dinner; and there were cards for three parties afterwards.
"Oh, how I wish it was next year!" says Miss