ere!" and down he sat on a bench, and gathered
a group round him.

"Now, are you all good children? I'm sure you look so!" said he, looking
round into the bright pure faces, fresh from Leaven, and feeling himself
the nearer heaven as he did so. "Ah! I see Mr. Mellot's been drawing you
pictures. He's a clever man, a wonderful man, isn't he? I can't draw you
pictures, nor tell you stories, like your schoolmistress. What shall I
do?"

"Sing to them, Fred!" said Valencia.

And he began warbling a funny song, with a child on each knee, and his
arms round three or four more, while the little faces looked up into
his, half awe-struck at the presence of a live lord, half longing to
laugh, but not sure whether it would be right.

Valencia and Campbell stood close together, exchanging looks.

"Dear fellow!" whispered she, "so simple and good when he is himself!
And he must go to that dreadful war!"

"Never mind. Perhaps by this very act he is earning permission to come
back again, a wiser and a more useful man."

"How then?"

"Is he not making friends with angels who always behold our Father's
face? At least he is showing capabilities of good, which God gave; and
which therefore God will never waste."

"Now, shall I sing you another song?"

"Oh yes, please!" rose from a dozen little mouths.

"You must not be troublesome to his lordship," says Grace.

"Oh no, I like it. I'll sing them one more song, and then--I want to
speak to you, Miss Harvey."

Grace curtsied, blushed, and shook all over. What could Lord Scoutbush
want to say to her?

That indeed was not very easy to discover at first; for Scoutbush felt
so strongly the oddity of taking a pretty young woman into his counsel
on a question of sanitary reform, that he felt mightily inclined to
laugh, and began beating about the bush, in a sufficiently confused
fashion.

"Well, Miss Harvey, I am exceedingly pleased with--with what I have seen
of the school--that is, what my sister tells, and the clergyman--"

"The clergyman?" thought Grace, surprised, as she well might be, at what
was entirely an impromptu invention of his lordship's.

"And--and--there is ten pounds toward the school, and--and, I will give
an annual subscription the same amount."

"Mr. Headley receives the subscriptions, my lord," said Grace, drawing
back from the proffered note.

"Of course," quoth Scoutbush, trusting again to an impromptu: "but this
is for yourself--a small mark of our se