plentifully streaked with green tree-moss, while his boots and
trousers looked as if they had partaken of the mud-bath which his
dogs had evidently been wallowing in.

"Off! off!" were his words, as he shook hands with his rectoress.
"Get away, Rollo!" with an energetic shove of the foot to the big
dog, who was about to shake his dripping coat for the ladies'
special benefit. "I saw you arrive last evening," he said, in the
conversational tone of a gentlemanly school-boy; "didn't you find it
very cold?"

"Not very. I did not see you, though."

"He was organizing the cheers," said Mr. Bindon. "You shone in
that, Bowater. They kept such good time."

"You were very good to cheer us at all," said Julius, "coming in the
wake of the Squire as we did."

"The best of it was," said the junior, "that Charlie was so awfully
afraid that he and poor Miles's wife would be taken for the Squire,
that he dashed in on his way to warn me to choke them off. If she
hadn't been ill, I must have set the boys on for a lark! How is
she, though?" he asked in a really kind tone.

"She looks very ill, poor thing," said Julius.

Here the bull terrier became assiduous in his attentions to
Rosamond; and between his master's calls and apologies, and her
caresses and excuses, not much more was heard, till Julius asked