’It is for the dicky-bird at my aunt’s.  There’s no lack of it at the Terrace; but it is an old habit, and there always was an illusion that Ormersfield groundsel is a superior article.’

‘I suppose that is why you grow go much.’

’Are you a gardener?  Some day we will go to work, clear the place, and separate the botanical from the intrusive!’

‘I should like it, of all things!’

‘I’ll send the horse round to the stable, and begin at once!’ exclaimed Louis, all eagerness; but Mary demurred, as she had promised to read to her mother and aunt some of their old favourites, Madame de Sevigne’s letters, and his attention flew off to his restless steed, which he wanted her to admire.

‘My Yeomanry charger,’ he said.  ’We turn out five troopers.  I hope you will be here when we go out, for going round to Northwold brought me into a direful scrape when I went to exhibit myself to the dear old Terrace world.  My father said it was an unworthy ambition.  What would he have thought, if he had seen Jane stroking me down with the brush on the plea of dust, but really on the principle of stroking a dog!  Good old Jane!  Have you seen her yet?  Has she talked to you about Master Oliver?’

The horse became so impatient, that Mary had no time for more than a monosyllable, before Louis was obliged to mount and ride off; and he was seen no more till just before dinner, when, with a shade of French malice, Mrs. Frost inquired about Jane and the carpenter:  she had seen the cap, still decorated with groundsel, lying in the hall, and had a shrewd suspicion, but the answer went beyond her expectations—­’Ah!’ he said, ’it is all the effect of the Norman mania!’

‘What have you been doing?  What is the matter?’ she cried, alarmed.

‘The matter is not with me, but with the magistrates.’

’My dear Louis, don’t look so very wise and capable, or I shall think it a very bad scrape indeed!  Pray tell me what you have been about.’

’You know Sir Gilbert Brewster and Mr. Shoreland are rabid about the little brook between their estates, of which each wishes to arrogate to himself the exclusive fishing.  Their keepers watch like the Austrian guard on the Danube, in a life of perpetual assault and battery.  Last Saturday, March 3rd, 1847, one Benjamin Hodgekin, aged fifteen, had the misfortune to wash his feet in the debateable water; the belligerent powers made common cause, and haled the wretch before the Petty Sessions.  His mother met me.  She lived in service here till she married a man at Marksedge, now dead.  This poor boy is an admirable son, the main stay of the family, who must starve if he were imprisoned, and she declared, with tears in her eyes, that she could not bear for a child of hers to be sent to gaol, and begged me to speak to the gentlemen.’  He started up with kindling eyes and vehement manner.  ‘I went to the Justice-room!’