Nevertheless the Senior Prefect of the college boys, when about to come out of the Cathedral on Sunday morning, found his gown pinned with a skewer so fast to the seat that he was only set free at the expense of a rent.  Public opinion decided that the deed had been done by the imp of Oakshott, and accordingly the whole of the Wykeham scholars set on him with hue and cry the first time they saw him outside the Close, and hunted him as far as St. Cross, where he suddenly and utterly vanished from their sight.

Mrs. Woodford agreed with Anne that it was a very strange story.  For how could he have been in the Cathedral at service time when it was well known that Major Oakshott had all his family together at his own form of worship in his house?  Anne, who had been in hopes that her mother would be thus convinced of his supernatural powers, looked disappointed, but she had afterwards to confess that Charles Archfield had found out that it was his cousin Sedley Archfield who had played the audacious trick, in revenge for a well-merited tunding from the Prefect.

“And then saddled it on young Oakshott?” asked her mother.

“Charley says one such matter more or less makes no odds to the Whig ape; but I cannot endure Sedley Archfield, mamma.”

“If he lets another lad bear the blame of his malice he cannot indeed be a good lad.”

“So Charley and Lucy say,” returned Anne.  “We shall be glad to be away from Winchester, for while Peregrine Oakshott torments slyly, Sedley Archfield loves to frighten us openly, and to hurt us to see how much we can bear, and if Charley tries to stand up for us, Sedley calls him a puny wench, and a milksop, and knocks him down.  But, dear madam, pray do not tell what I have said to her ladyship, for there is no knowing what Sedley would do to us.”

“My little maid has not known before what boys can be!”

“No; but indeed Charles Archfield is quite different, almost as if he had been bred in London.  He is a very gentleman.  He never is rude to any girl, and he is courteous and gentle and kind.  He gathered walnuts for us yesterday, and cracked all mine, and I am to make him a purse with two of the shells.”

Mrs. Woodford smiled, but there was a short thrill of anxiety in her motherly heart as her glance brought up a deeper colour into Anne’s cheeks.  There was a reserve to bring that glow, for the child knew that if she durst say that Charles called her his little sweetheart and wife, and that the walnut-shell purse would be kept as a token, she should be laughed at as a silly child, perhaps forbidden to make it, or else her uncle might hear and make a joke of it.  It was not exactly disingenuousness, but rather the first dawn of maidenly reserve and modesty that reddened her cheek in a manner her mother did not fail to observe.