being courted by everybody who is anything. I am confident that the
Hunters, and those people, call him in for mere trifles, just to
cultivate his friendship. I know that Laura Hunter is fairly wild
about him--and she is a chronic dyspeptic, luckily," my step-mother
added with a malicious chuckle.

"Poor girl!" I exclaimed with well feigned sympathy, "I should think
she would not care to see any one she liked under such trying
circumstances."

"Neither does she--_except Dr Campbell_--she digests him so well that
her family would like to see her live upon him altogether."

I began to see that I was serving as a target for my step-mother's
ridicule of something which wounded her jealous tendencies, she knew
that I could make no retort for or against the absent ones at whom
these sly missiles were being aimed. I knew nothing of the
circumstances so broadly treated by her, and I therefore kept silent,
and applied myself to my book with renewed interest, and left my
step-mother mistress of the field--there was no glory in the conquest,
to speak of.

Towards four o'clock of the same afternoon Freddie and I were seated
upon the library floor, matching some very irregular blocks that, when
rightly fitted together, would display to our eager eyes the vividly
coloured representations of that classic and time-honoured tale known
as the "Death and burial of Cock Robin."

We were progressing slowly, and had reached that very important part
where the "fly," as an ocular witness, gives his substantial and