Allen Brownlow, at twenty, was emphatically the Eton and Christchurch production, just well made and good-looking enough to do full justice to his training and general getting up, without too much individual personality of his own.  He looked only so much of a man as was needful for looking a perfect gentleman, and his dress and equipments were in the most perfect quietly exquisite style, as costly as possible, yet with no display, and nothing to catch the eye.

“Well, Bobus,” he said, “you made out your expedition.  How did the place look?”

“Wasting its sweetness,” said his mother; “it is tantalising to think of it.”

“It could hardly be said to be wasted,” said Bobus; “the natives were disporting themselves all over it.”

“Where?” asked Allen, with displeased animation.

“O, Essie and Ellie were promenading a select party about the gardens.  I could almost hear Mackintyre gnashing his teeth at their inroads on the forced strawberries, and the park and Elmwood Spinney were dotted so thick with people, that we had to look sharp not to fall in with any one.”

“Elmwood Spinney!” exclaimed Allen; “you don’t mean that they were running riot over the preserves?”

“I don’t think there were more than half-a-dozen there.  Bauerson was quite edified.  He said, ’So! they had on your English Sunday quite falsely me informed.’  There were a couple of lovers spooning and some children gathering flowers, and it had just the Arcadian look dear to the German eye.”

“Children,” cried Allen, as if they were vipers.  “That’s just what I told you, mother.  If you will persist in throwing open the park, we shall not have a pheasant on the place.”

“My dear boy, I have seen them running about like chickens in a farmyard.”

“Yes, but what’s the use, if all the little beggars in Kenminster are to be let in to make them wild!  And when you knew I particularly wished to have something worth asking Prince Siegfried down to.”

“Never mind, Allen,” put in Janet; “you can ask him to shoot into the poultry yard.  The poor things are just as thick there, and rather tamer, so the sport will be the more noble.”

“You know nothing about it, Janet,” said Allen, in displeasure.

“But Allen,” said his mother, apologetically, though she felt with Janet, “the woods are locked up.”

“Locked!  As if that was any use when you let a lot of boys come marauding all over the place!”

“Really, Allen,” said his mother, “when I remember what we used to say about old Mr. Barnes, I cannot find it in my heart to play the same game!”

“It is quite a different thing.”

“How?”

“He did it out of mere surliness.”

“I don’t suppose it makes much difference to the excluded whether it is done out of mere surliness, or for the sake of the preserves.”

“Mother!” Allen spoke as if the absurdity of the argument were quite too much for him; but his brother and sister both laughed, which nettled him into adding—-