Explain to him elaborately that I am rather more at home on horseback than on my legs.  He winks, as if he didn’t quite believe me.  I can’t go on, as it’s certainly infra dig. to be praising one’s accomplishments, especially to a chit like this.

“We buried NERO here,” the boy says, pointing to a damp mound.  “He was our Newfoundland dog, and the gardener dropped a beam on him, and killed him as dead as JULIUS CAESAR.  Oh, Mr. JOYNSON, when did JULIUS CAESAR die?”

Happily my presence of mind does not desert me.  I reply, severely,—­

“What!  Don’t you know your Roman History better than that?”

“No,” he answers—­“do you?” Then a sudden thought strikes him.  “Oh, I’ll ask Miss MYRTLE” (Miss MYRTLE is the Governess)—­“she’ll be sure to know. She isn’t a muff.”

Query—­What is the best line to take with a remark like that?  Before I decide the point, HERBIE rushes out into the garden, and is immediately sent spinning into a cucumber-frame by his kind elder brother, who then disappears into the house.

Yells from HERBIE.  Go in and send the Governess to him.  Relief from children for about ten minutes.

At Breakfast.—­Mother cross.  Seems to think that I ought to have prevented ERNIE from mutilating HERBIE.  HERBIE appears with head bandaged, still sobbing.  French again, thank Heaven!—­so children silent.  Never felt the advantage of foreign languages till now.

Mamma, with a courage worthy of a better cause, asks me, “What time lessons will begin?” I reply, evasively, “that I shall be in the library, and that I will ring for ERNEST (I lay stress on the word ERNEST, as excluding the two others) when I am ready for him.”

I do, after a good preliminary smoke.  HERBIE and JACK present themselves at the same time.  I send them off to the Governess, and lock the door; Governess sends them back to me; result is, that they play about outside library all morning, so that we (ERNEST and I) can hardly hear ourselves speak.

Put ERNIE through his paces.  Ask him what he knows.  Process (I fear) incidentally reveals to him what I know.  Hear him at lunch explaining to HERBIE (with whom he has made friends again) that I am “not bad at sums, but a shocking duffer at Latin.”  Pretend not to hear the remark.

Afternoon.—­Find the three boys, and two girls, all waiting—­apparently—­to go out for a country walk with me!

What!  Two-and-two!  Never!

“But—­er—­” I say, addressing the little girls, in a pleasant tone, “aren’t you going out with your Governess?”

“Oh, yes”—­they both exclaim at once—­“she’s coming too!”

The situation is becoming more and more embarrassing.  I can’t, in politeness, refuse the Governess’s society for a walk.  I solve the problem, temporarily, by telling all five children to run up to Miss MYRTLE, and ask her which way she thinks we had better go.