then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart

complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon

nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But

here we are at Stonnington--a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my

dears, as we have brought no cockswain. Neither of you need land, you

know, but I shall go into the schoolroom."

"One thing I want to know," said the active-minded Dolly, as the horses

came blowing their breath up the hill: "if his father was Sir Edmond,

and he is the only child, according to all the laws of nature, he ought

to be Sir Blyth Scudamore."

"It shows how little you have been out--as good Mrs. Twemlow expresses

it--that you do not even understand the laws of nature as between a

baronet and a knight."

"Oh, to be sure; I recollect! How very stupid of me! The one goes on,

and the other doesn't, after the individual stops. But whose fault is

it that I go out so little? So you see you are caught in your own trap,

papa."

CHAPTER VIII

A LESSON IN THE AENEID

In those days Stonnington was a very pretty village, and such it

continued to be until it was ravaged by a railway. With the railway came

all that is hideous and foul, and from it fled all that is comely. The

cattle-shed, called by rail-highwaymen "the Station," with its roof of

iron Pan-pipes and red bull's-eyes stuck on stack-poles, whistles and

stares where the grand trees stood and the village green lay sleeping.

On the site of the gray-stone grammar school is an "Operative

Institute," whose front (not so thick as the skin of a young ass) is

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