I’d much rather you had both come up to me in London. One can find something to do there, and there’s something to see. I can’t think how you people manage to live down here.”

“Oh! we find something to do, don’t we, Harry?” said Philip, laughing. But Harry was very busy with Neddy, who had taken it into his head to go down a lane which led to the pound—a place where he had been more than once locked up; and it was as much as ever the lad could do to stop him; so Philip’s question remained unanswered. “I say,” continued Philip at last, after they had been conversing some time, during which Master Fred had been cross-questioning Philip as to his educational knowledge, and giving that young gentleman to understand what a high position he occupied at Saint Paul’s School—“I say,” said Philip, “can you swim?”

“No,” replied Fred.

“Can you play cricket?”

“No,” said Fred.

“Fish, row, shoot, rat, and all that sort of thing?” said Philip.

“No!” said the other. “I have always lived in London, where we do not practise that class of amusement.”

“Oh! come, then,” said Philip, “we shall be able to teach you something. Only wait a bit, and you’ll see how we live down here. But here we are; and there’s Papa waiting for us under the porch.”

As Philip said this, Sam had crawled down from his seat, opened a swing gate, and led the pony into a garden through which wound a carriage drive up to a long low house, all along the front of which extended a verandah, the supports and sloping roof being completely covered with roses, clematis, and jasmine, which hung in the wildest profusion amongst the light trellis-work, and then ran up the sides of the bedroom windows, peeping in at the lattice panes, and seeming to be in competition with the ivy as to which should do most towards covering up the brickwork of the pretty place; for it really was a pretty place,—so pretty, that even Fred, who thought that there was nothing anywhere to compare with London, could not help casting admiring looks around him. All along one side of the gravel drive there was a tall, smoothly-clipped hedge of laurels; while on the left the velvet lawn, dotted all over with beds of scarlet geranium, verbena, and calceolaria, with here and there rustic vases brimming over with blooming creepers, swept down in a slope towards the park-like fields, from which it was separated by a light ring fence. Right in front was another mighty laurel hedge, that looked to be almost centuries old; and on the other side was what was called the kitchen garden, though, I think, it might have been called the parlour garden just as rightly, from the rich banquets it used to supply of all kinds of luscious fruits—peaches, nectarines, plums, strawberries, apples, pears, currants; and as to gooseberries, the trees used to be so loaded with great rough golden and crimson fellows, that they would lay their branches down on the ground to rest them, because the weight was greater than they could bear. But the greatest beauty of the house at Hollowdell, or, as it was called in the neighbourhood, “The Grange,” was the ivy, which did not creep there, but ran, and ran all over the place—sides, roof, and all—even twining, and twisting, and growing right up amongst the two great old-fashioned chimney-stacks, round the pots, and some shoots even drooping in them, and getting black and dry amongst the smoke that came curling and wreathing out. For Squire Inglis would not have the ivy cut anywhere excepting in the front, where he used to superintend while Sam cleared it away now and then, so as to give the roses and creeping plants a chance to show their beauties in the bright summer-time. And there the Grange stood, with flowers blooming around it in every direction, as sweet and pretty a place as could welcome any one just come from the great desert of bricks and mortar called London, in which people who are not compelled are so foolish as to go and spend their time in the sunniest and brightest days of the year.

And, as Philip said, there stood Papa beneath the porch; and directly after there stood Mamma too, to welcome their sister’s child, whom they had not seen since he was almost a baby.

“Now, boys,” said the Squire, after all the handshaking had been finished, “I’ve nothing to do with this. Fred is your visitor for a month, so I leave you to make him happy and comfortable, and mind you see that he enjoys himself.”

Philip and Harry promised readily enough that they would. “But, Papa,” said Harry, “Dr Edwards said, when we broke up, that we were to do a little work every day during the holidays, and—and—”

“And what?” said his father. “Eh, now,” said he, good-humouredly; “I think I can make a good guess at what you would like. You’d like me to write to the Doctor to let you off, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh! yes, yes, yes, Papa,” shouted the boys, clapping their hands. “Hurrah, that’s capital!”

“Well, but would it be right?” said their father, seriously.

“Oh! yes, Papa,” said Harry; “for we will do so much after the holidays, and work ever so hard to make up for it; and it is so very, very hard to learn lessons away from school. I never can get on half so well, for one can’t help thinking of the games we want to play at, and then one don’t feel to be obliged to learn, and it does make such a difference: so do please write, there’s a good, good father,” said Harry, coaxingly.

The Squire laughed, and that laugh was quite sufficient to satisfy the lads, who gave two or three frisks, and tossed their caps in the air; when Philip’s fell on the top of the verandah, and had to be hooked down with a long hay-rake.

Dinner was nearly ready, so Fred followed his box up to the pretty little bedroom he was to occupy—one which opened out of the room set apart for Harry and Philip; and soon after he was down in the dining-room eating a meal that called forth the remarks and comparisons of his cousins, who were dreadful trencher-men. They told him that he must learn what a country appetite meant, and so, by way of teaching him, they dragged him off, as soon as dinner was over, to look at all the wonders of the place. First over the flower-garden, and round by the aviary, where Mamma’s gold and silver pheasants were kept; and then into the green-house, where Poll, the parrot, hung in her great gilt cage, swinging about amongst the flowers, dancing up and down, and shrieking out whenever anybody came by; then swaying backwards and forwards in the ring in the cage, and climbing up and down all over the bars, this way and that way, head up and head down, and all the time looking as wicked and cunning as a hook-beaked old grey parrot can look.

“Sam, Sam, where’s the master?” shouted Poll, in a reedy-weedy tone, like a cracked clarionet, as soon as the lads came in sight. “Stealing the grapes. Stealing the grapes,” she shouted again. “Rogues, rogues, rogues! Two in the morning, hi! hi!” And then she gave a shrill whistle, and burst out into a loud hearty laugh, that made Fred stare, it was so natural.

“There,” said Philip, proudly, “you haven’t got such birds as that in London.”

“Oh yes, we have,” said Fred, “but Papa don’t care about buying them. Poor Polly,” he continued, putting his finger in to stroke the parrot.

“Don’t do that,” shouted the boys together; but it was too late, for almost at the same moment Fred gave utterance to a most doleful “Oh–h–h!” Poll had made a snap at his finger, and hooked a piece of flesh out sufficient to make it bleed pretty freely.

“What a beast!” said Fred, angrily, and binding his handkerchief round the place; “I’d kill it if I had my way.”

“But it was your fault,” said Harry, quietly, “for trying to touch it; wasn’t it?”

“Ah! but he didn’t know it would bite,” said Philip, “or he would not have done so: but never mind, come