order of things and be sent to boarding schools. Up to the
present time a governess or a tutor had taught their young ideas to
shoot, (straight or otherwise) with Admiral Seldon as head of the
discipline department, a position by no means a sinecure since Beverly
represented one-half the need of such a department. Until the children
were twelve the governess had been all sufficient but at that point Athol
rebelled at being "a sissy" and demanded a tutor, Beverly entirely
concurring in his views. So a tutor had been installed and had remained
until the previous July, when he was called to fill a more lucrative
position elsewhere. Thus Woodbine's young shoots were left without a
trainer, to the dismay of its older members and distress of its younger
ones, for both Beverly and Athol had grown very fond of Norman Lee, who
seemed but little older than themselves, though in reality quite ten
years their senior. In the schoolroom he had been the staid, dignified
instructor but beyond its walls no better chum and comrade could have
been found. He was hale-fellow in all their good times and frolics.
Consequently his resignation "just broke up the whole outfit," as Athol
put it, and both children vowed they wouldn't have anybody else at
Woodbine because nobody else could ever be half so nice as Norman Lee.
Long before the three years of his tutorship ended he had become "Norman"
to all the household, even the children adopting the more familiar
appellation beyond the schoolroom doors, though within it the concession
of "Mr. Norman" was yielded, which secretly amused the young tutor not a
little, and often caused him to wonder how the boy and girl contrived to
maintain the attitude so consistently and with such perfect gravity. For
four hours of the day he might have been Methuselah's own brother from
their standpoint but upon the school-room's threshold they dropped as
garments the relations of pupils and teacher and became the best of good
chums.

It had been a singularly happy relation and it was not surprising that it
seemed to them well-nigh impossible to renew it with an entire stranger.

And truth to tell the Admiral and Mrs. Ashby were not in the least
sanguine of being able to find any one else capable of repeating it and
for a time were a good deal daunted by the outlook for the coming year.

The previous year Archie Carey had gone away to school and during his
holidays had come back to Uplands brimful of enthusiasm an