“Why do you want to call him a fisher?  It is like a Sunday School story Marjorie read me, a Yankee book, about a little baby boy that was left on a doorstep, and the doorstep man’s name was Fish, and he had him baptized Preserved because he was preserved, and he grew up to be a good man and was called Preserved Fish.  Wasn’t that awful?”

“Oh very streinge!  If my boy had been a little girl, I would have nimed her Marjorie.”

“See, Mr. Biggles, here she comes again, and Cecile, and, O horrors!  Orther Lom.”

It was too true.  The young ladies had come out to enjoy the morning air, and, after a turn in the garden, had rushed to the hill meadow to escape the Departmental gentleman, whose elegant morocco slippers they had heard on the stairs.  Spite of the morning dew he had pursued them, well pleased with himself, and doubtful whom to conquer with his charms.

“O Mr. Biggles,” continued Marjorie, “that horrid man got me a naughty, cruel shaking, and he’s sent my dear Eugene away never to come back any more.  I know, because I went into aunty’s room when I got up; and she told me.”

“It’s too bad, Marjorie.  Who mide that little song on Mr. Lamb?”

“You’ll never tell?”

“No.”

“’Pon your honour?”

“’Pon my honour.”

“It was papa, you old goosey.”

“Not Mr. Coristine?”

“No, of course not.”

“My I sy that it wasn’t Mr. Coristine?”

“O yes, don’t let them think any bad things about Eugene, poor boy.”

“Good morning, Miss Carmichael,” said Mr. Bigglethorpe, or rather he bawled it; “will you come here a minute, please?”

Miss Carmichael gladly skipped down, leaving her companion a prey to the gentleman of the morocco slippers.

“I want to clear our friend, Mr. Coristine, of a suspicion which you may not have shired,” said the fisherman.  “He didn’t mike that little piece of poetry on Mr. Lamb that Marjorie and the other children sang yesterday morning.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bigglethorpe; I am very glad to hear it.”

“Nasty pig!” said Marjorie to herself; “she drove Eugene away all the same.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Lamb was conversing with Miss Du Plessis.

“You don’t seem to mind the doo, Miss Cecile.”

“Oh, but I do,” she answered.

“Your shoes are parfectly wat, sowking I should think.”

“No, they are not wet through; they are thicker than you imagine.”

“By the bye, where is his high mightiness, the lawyer, this mawrning?”

“Mr. Coristine has returned to the city.”

“Haw, cawlled oway to some pettifogging jawb I suppowse?”

“Such as your Crown Lands case.”

“Naw, you down’t say, Miss Cecile, thot he’s awff ofter thot jawb?”

“I cannot tell what Mr. Coristine may have to do in addition to that.  He did not confide his business to me.”