child, through a great sorrow. Thus she was in every respect more
developed than her contemporary Lucy, who regarded her with wonder
as well as affection, and she was the object of the boyish devotion
of Charley, who often defended her from his cousin Sedley's
endeavours to put down what he considered upstart airs in a little
nobody from London. Sedley teased and baited every weak thing in
his way, and Lucy had been his chief butt till Anne Woodford's
unconscious dignity and more cultivated manners excited his utmost
spleen.

Lucy might be incredulous, but she was eager to tell that when her
cousin Sedley Archfield was going back to 'chambers,' down from the
Close gate came the imp on his shoulders in the twilight and twisted
both legs round his neck, holding tight on in spite of plunges,
pinches, and endeavours to scrape him off against the wall, which
were frustrated or retaliated by hair pulling, choking, till just
ere entering the college gateway, where Sedley looked to get his
revenge among his fellows, he found his shoulders free, and heard
"Ho! ho! ho!" from the top of a wall close at hand. All the more
was the young people's faith in the changeling story confirmed, and
child-world was in those days even more impenetrable to their elders
than at present.

Changeling or no, it was certain that Peregrine Oakshott was the
plague of the Close, where his father, an ex-officer of the
Parliamentary army, had unwillingly hired a house for the winter,
for the sake of medical treatment for his wife, a sufferer from a
complication of ailments. Oakwood, his home, was about five miles
from Dr. Woodford's living of Portchester, and as the families would
thus be country neighbours, Mrs. Woodford thought it well to begin