of my own age in the school; but I know I do look girlish about the
face. I have done everything I could to make my face rough. I have sat
in the sun, and wetted it with sea-water every five minutes, but it's
no use."

"I should not trouble about it. Your face will get manly enough in
time, you may be sure; and I like you all the better for it, my boy,
because you are certainly very like your mother. And now, Ralph, I
want you to enjoy yourself as much as you can while you are here. The
house itself is dull, but I suppose you will be a good deal out of
doors. I have hired a pony, which will be here to-day from Poole, and
I have arranged with Watson, a fisherman at Swanage, that you can go
out with him in his fishing-boat whenever you are disposed. It is
three miles from here, but you can ride over on your pony and leave it
at the little inn there till you come back. I am sorry to say I do not
know any boys about here; but Mabel Withers, the daughter of my
neighbor and friend the clergyman of Bilston, the village just outside
the lodge, has a pony, and is a capital rider, and I am sure she will
show you over the country. I suppose you have not had much to do with
girls?" he added with a smile at seeing a slight expression of dismay
on Ralph's face, which had expressed unmixed satisfaction at the first
items of the programme.

"No, sir; not much," Ralph said. "Of course some of my schoolfellows
have sisters, but one does not see much of them."

"I think you will get on very well together. She is a year or two
younger than you are, and I am afraid she is considered rather a
tomboy. She has been caught at the top of a tall tree examining the
eggs in a nest, and in many similar ungirl-like positions; so you