success about him, as well there might be, since he had come out
triumphantly from the examination for Eton College, and had been
informed that morning that there were vacancies enough for his
immediate admission.

There was a pensiveness mixed with the satisfaction in his mother's
eyes as she looked at him, for it was the first break into the home.
She had been the only teacher of her children till two years ago,
when Allen had begun to attend a day school a few streets off, and
the first boy's first flight from under her wing, for ever so short a
space, is generally a sharp wound to the mother's heart.

Not that Allen would leave an empty house behind him. Lying at full
length on the carpet, absorbed in a book, was Robert, a boy on whom
the same capacious brow as Janet's sat better than on the feminine
creature. He was reading on, undisturbed by the pranks of three
younger children, John Lucas, a lithe, wiry, restless elf of nine,
with a brown face and black curly head, and Armine and Barbara, young
persons of seven and six, on whom nature had been more beneficent in
the matter of looks, for though brown was their prevailing
complexion, both had well-moulded, childish features, and really fine
eyes. The hubbub of voices, as they tumbled and rushed about the
window and balcony, was the regular accompaniment of dinner, though
on the first plaintive tone from the little girl, the mother
interrupted a "Well, but papa," from Janet, with "Babie, Babie."

"It's Jock, Mother Carey! He _will_ come into Fairyland too soon."

"What's the last news from Fairyland, Babie?" asked the father as the
little one ran up to him.