me."

"What do you mean?"

For of late Ascott had said very little about Mr. Lyon--not half so
much as Mr. Lyon, in his steadily persistent letters to Miss Leaf,
told her about her nephew Ascott.

"I mean that I'll not be preached to like that by a woman. It's bad
enough to stand it from a man; but then Lyon's a real sharp fellow,
who knows the world, which women don't, Aunt Hilary. Besides, he
coaches me in my Latin and Greek; so I let him pitch into me now and
then. But I won't let you; so just stop it; will you."

Something new in Ascott's tone--speaking more of the resentful
fierceness of the man than the pettishness of the boy--frightened his
little aunt, and silenced her. By-and-by she took comfort from the
reflection that, as the lad had in his anger betrayed, he had beside
him in London a monitor whose preaching would be so much wiser and
more effectual than her own that she determined to say no more.

The rare hearing of Mr. Lyon's name--for, time and absence having
produced their natural effect, except when his letter came, he was
seldom talked about now--set Hilary thinking.

"Do you go to see him often?" she said, at last.

"Who? Mr. Lyon?" And Ascott, delighted' to escape into a fresh
subject, became quite cheerful and communicative. "Oh, bless you! He
wouldn't care for my going to him. He lives in a two-pair back, only