At this happy description the tears of pleasure sprang to the
foolish eyes of Mrs. Ray, while Rupert, thinking with much wisdom
that all the conditions were favourable, gazed up into the Colonel's
face, and fired his last shot.

"What really was the fair-haired knight's name?"

"Perhaps you will know some day," answered the Colonel, half
playfully, half wearily.


§2

In the course of the same summer Master Archibald Pennybet, of
Wimbledon, celebrated his eighth birthday. He celebrated it by a
riotous waking-up in the sleeping hours of dawn; he celebrated it by
a breakfast which extended him so much that his skin became
unbearably tight; and then, in a new white sailor-suit and brown
stockings turned over at the calves to display a couple of
magnificent knees, he celebrated some more of it in the garden.
There on the summer lawn he stood, unconsciously deliberating how
best to give new expression to the personality of Archibald
Pennybet. He was dark, gloriously built, and possessed eyes that
lazily drooped by reason of their heavy lashes; and, I am sorry to
say, he evoked from a boudoir window the gurgling admiration of his
fashionable mother, who, while her hair was being dressed, allowed
her glance to swing from her hand-mirror, which framed a gratifying
vision of herself, to the window, which framed a still more
gratifying vision of her son. "He gets his good looks from me," she