“Mr. Underwood!  I am glad to see you.”

“I thought I would run down and look at the house you were so good as to mention for my sister, and let this chap have a smell of the sea.”

There was a contention between General Mohun’s hospitality and Lancelot’s intention of leaving his bag at the railway hotel, but the former gained the day, the more easily because there was an assurance that the nephew who slept at Miss Mohun’s for the sake of his day-school would take little Felix Underwood under his protection, and show him his curiosities.  The boy’s eyes grew round, and he exclaimed—-

“Foolish guillemots’ eggs?”

“He is in the egg stage,” said his father, smiling.

“I won’t answer for guillemots,” said the General, “but nothing seems to come amiss to Fergus, though his chief turn is for stones.”

There was a connection between the families, Bernard Underwood, the youngest brother of Lance, having married the elder sister of the aforesaid Fergus Merrifield.  Miss Mohun, the sister who made a home for the General, had looked out the house that Lance had come to inspect.  As it was nearly half-past twelve o’clock, the party went round by the school, where, in the rear of the other rushing boys, came Fergus, in all the dignity of the senior form.

“Look at him,” said the General, “those are honours one only gets once or twice in one’s life, before beginning at the bottom again.”

Fergus graciously received the introduction; and the next sound that was heard was, “Have you any good fossils about you?” in a tone as if he doubted whether so small a boy knew what a fossil meant; but little Felix was equal to the occasion.

“I once found a shepherd’s crown, and father said it was a fossil sea-urchin, and that they are alive sometimes.”

“Echini.  Oh yes-—recent, you mean.  There are lots of them here.  I don’t go in for those mere recent things,” said Fergus, in a pre-Adamite tone, “but my sister does.  I can take you down to a fisherman who has always got some.”

“Father, may I?  I’ve got my eighteenpence,” asked the boy, turning up his animated face, while Fergus, with an air of patronage, vouched for the honesty of Jacob Green, and undertook to bring his charge back in time for luncheon.

Lancelot Underwood had entirely got over that sense of being in a false position which had once rendered society distasteful to him.  Many more men of family were in the like position with himself than had been the case when his brother had begun life; moreover, he had personally achieved some standing and distinction through the ‘Pursuivant’.

General Mohun was delighted with his companion, whom he presented to his sister as the speedy consequence of her recommendation.  She was rather surprised at the choice of an emissary, but her heart was won when she found Mr. Underwood as deep in the voluntary school struggle as she could be.  Her brother held up his hands, and warned her that it was quite enough to be in the fray without going over it again, and that the breath of parish troubles would frighten away the invalid.