'And wouldn't he make a jolly schoolmaster?' exclaimed Reginald. 'Boys
would get on capitally with Jardine. They'd never try to bosh _him_.'

'Schoolmaster, indeed?' echoed Bessie, with an offended air.

'I suppose you think it wouldn't be good enough for him? You expect him
to be made an archbishop off-hand, without being educated up to his work
by the rising generation. No doubt you forget that there have been such
men as Arnold, and Temple, and Moberly. Pray what higher office can a man
hold in this world than to form the minds of the rising generation?'

'I wish your master would form your manners,' said Bessie, 'for they are
simply detestable.'

It was nearly the end of June, and the song of the nightingales was
growing rarer in the twilight woods.

Ida started early one heavenly midsummer morning, with her book and her
luncheon in a little basket, to see the old lodge-keeper at Wendover
Abbey, who had nursed the elder Wendovers when they were babies in the
nurseries at the Abbey, and who had lived in a Gothic cottage at the
gate--built on purpose for her by the last squire--ever since her
retirement from active service. This walk to the Abbey was one of Ida's
favourite rambles, and on this June morning the common, the wood, the
corn-fields, and distant hills were glorious with that fleeting beauty of
summer which gives a glamour to the most commonplace scenery.

She had a long idle morning before her, a thing which happened rarely.
Miss Wendover had driven to Romsey with the Colonel and his wife, to
lunch with some old friends in the neighbourhood of that quiet town, and