"He's very tired--he has run about all day. He ought to be quiet
till he goes to bed. Otherwise he won't sleep." These declarations
fell successively and very distinctly from Mrs. Ambient's lips.

Her husband, still without turning round, bent over the boy and
looked at him in silence. The vicaress gave a genial irrelevant
laugh and observed that he was a precious little pet. "Let him
choose," said Mark Ambient. "My dear little boy, will you go with me
or will you stay with your mother?"

"Oh it's a shame!" cried the vicar's lady with increased hilarity.

"Papa, I don't think I can choose," the child answered, making his
voice very low and confidential. "But I've been a great deal with
mamma to-day," he then added.

"And very little with papa! My dear fellow, I think you HAVE
chosen!" On which Mark Ambient walked off with his son, accompanied
by re-echoing but inarticulate comments from my fellow-visitor.

His wife had seated herself again, and her fixed eyes, bent on the
ground, expressed for a few moments so much mute agitation that
anything I could think of to say would be but a false note. Yet she
none the less quickly recovered herself, to express the sufficiently
civil hope that I didn't mind having had to walk from the station. I
reassured her on this point, and she went on: "We've got a thing
that might have gone for you, but my husband wouldn't order it."
After which and another longish pause, broken only by my plea that
the pleasure of a walk with our friend would have been quite what I