“I hope you bought up the whole edition,” put in Harry.

“And here—­even you, you dear, unmusical boy, are represented.  Do you remember it, Harry?” (playing a few bars.) “The air you were always whistling, and said the sailors sang at watch.”

“Yes, that was it,” said he, with brightening eyes.  “How could you recollect?”

“Well, when you went to sea I got somewhat plaintive and dull; used to hum it about the house, and set down the notes.”

“But these are not the right words.”

“Oh, no,” said Kate, casting down her eyes with modest candour; “they are my own.”

Now Harry at the same moment felt almost certain he had seen the lines somewhere before; and, being rather apt to stick to a point, turned it over in his mind, while his cousin poured forth a flood of song like a skylark soaring.  Ere she desisted, Dutton had left the room, and discovered the words in an old Annual on a top shelf in the library.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE SPRING WOODS.

But, Tom, you’ll soon find, for I happen to know,
That such walks often lead into straying;
And the voices of cousins are sometimes so low,
Heaven only knows what you’ll be saying. 
And long ere the walk is half over those strings
Of your heart are all put into play
By the voice of those fair demi-sisterly things,
In not quite the most brotherly way. 
—­Hon. Mrs. Norton.

More snow fell that night, and Lord Bromley’s gardeners were sweeping the walks from an early hour next morning.  Robins lingered about with bright eyes, soliciting crumbs, and shaking off showers of snow as they flew from yew-hedge to holly-bush.  Breakfast was over at “The Towers,” except for a few late individuals; and Harry Dutton, in a pair of long boots, and, I am afraid, a pipe in his mouth, was taking a quarter-deck walk in front of the ball-room windows.  He was thinking pretty hard, and the subject was evidently not pleasing, as it was with a sensation of relief he observed a deft figure crossing the ball-room, in a fur-trimmed cloth costume, remarkably well kilted up over a resolute-looking pair of small boots.  She signed to him to open the windows and let her out.  Harry made a feint of emptying his pipe, but received gracious permission to “puff away.”

“That killing get-up can’t be for me,” thought he.  “I’ll give her the tip she wants.”

“A certain good-looking Colonel of Hussars has gone to play a match at billiards till luncheon.”

“Why that blunt and abrupt observation, a propos to nothing?”

“You must excuse my sea manners.  I should have used more circumlocution, but they don’t put much polish on us on board.”

“No, they don’t, and you boast of it, hence that phrase.  You never hear a soldier apologizing for his ’army manners’!”

“Speaks well for their modesty!  Well, Kate, where are you bound for?  You are not rigged up in that way merely to coast about here.”