out of the kitchen; Delaford was off her mind, and neither stairs nor even knife-cleaning could hurt her feelings.  To be sure, her subordinate, a raw girl from Marksgedge, devoured all that was set before her, and what was not eatable, she broke; but as she had been sent from home with no injunctions but to ‘look sharp and get stout,’ so she was only fulfilling her vocation, and on some question of beer, her mother came and raved at Charlotte, and would have raved at Mrs. Frost, if her dignified presence had not overawed her.  So she only took the girl away in offence, and Charlotte was much happier with an occasional charwoman to share her labours.

There was much happiness in No. 5, notwithstanding that the spring and summer of 1851 were very hard times; and perhaps felt the more, because the sunny presence of Louis Fitzjocelyn did not shine there as usual.

He was detained in London all the Easter recess by his father’s illness.  Lord Ormersfield was bound hand and foot by a severe attack of rheumatism, caught almost immediately after his going to London.  It seemed to have taken a strong hold of his constitution, and lingered on for weeks, so that he could barely move from his armchair by the fire, and began to give himself up as henceforth to be a crippled old man—­a view out of which Louis and Sir Miles Oakstead tried by turns to laugh him; indeed, Sir Miles accused him of wanting to continue his monopoly of his son—­and of that doubly-devoted attention by which Louis enlivened his convalescence.

Society had very little chance with Fitzjocelyn now, unless he was fairly hunted out by the Earl, who was always haunted by ungrounded alarms for his health and spirits, and never allowed him to fail in the morning rides, which were in fact his great refreshment, as much from the quiet and the change of scene, as from the mere air and exercise.

‘Father,’ said he, coming in one day a little after Easter, ’you are a very wise man!’

‘Eh!’ said the Earl, looking up in wonder and expectation excited by this prelude, hoping for the fulfilment of some political prediction.

‘He is a wise man,’ proceeded Louis, ’who does not put faith in treasures, especially butlers; also, who does not bring a schoolboy to London with nothing to do!’

‘What now?’ said the Earl.  ‘Is young Conway in a scrape?’

‘I am,’ said Fitzjocelyn; ’I have made a discovery, and I don’t exactly see what to do with it.  You see I have been taking the boy out riding with me, as the only thing I could well do for him these holidays.  You must know he is very good and patronizing; I believe he thinks he could put me up to a few things in time.  Well, to-day, as we passed a questionable-looking individual, Walter bowed, as if highly elated by the honour of his acquaintance, and explained to me that he was the celebrated—­I forget who, but that’s owing to my defective education.  The fact is, that this Delaford, to whom my aunt implicitly trusts, has been introducing this unlucky boy to a practical course of Bell’s Life—­things that I went through Eton, and never even heard of.’  And he detailed some of them.