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looked forward to furnishing. I should like the trouble, and I've got plenty of time. And you've got plenty of money, darling, unless you've been deceiving us all this time."

      "Well, shall we go and have a look at it together? What about to-morrow? Have you got anything to do?"

      "Yes, lots. But I don't think there's anything I can't put off. How far is it from London? Shall we motor down?"

      "Yes, if it's fine. We'd better, in any case, as it's five miles from a station, and we might not be able to get a car there. I don't think I could stand five miles in a horse fly."

      "You're always so impatient, darling. Having your own way so much has spoiled you. I expect B will want to come."

      "Well, she can if she likes."

      "I think I'd rather it was just you and me. We always have a lot of fun together."

      He gave her a hug and a kiss. The butler came in at that moment with the tea-tray, and smiled paternally. The footman who followed him looked abashed.

      "Look, Jarvis, we've found the very house," said Caroline, exhibiting a large photograph of Abington Abbey.

      "Lor, miss!" said the butler indulgently.

      Beatrix and Barbara came in, accompanied by the Dragon.

      Beatrix was even prettier than Caroline, with a frail ethereal loveliness that made her appear almost too good for this sinful world, which she wasn't at all, though she was a very charming creature. She was very fair, with a delicious complexion of cream and roses, and a figure of extreme slimness. She was still supposed to be in the schoolroom, and occasionally was so. She was only just eighteen, and wore her hair looped and tied with a big bow; but she would be presented in the spring and would then blossom fully.

      Barbara was very fair too—a pretty girl with a smiling good-humoured face, but not so pretty as her sisters. She had her arm in that of the Dragon.

      Miss Waterhouse was tall and straight, with plentiful grey hair, and handsome regular features. Her age was given in the Grafton family as 'fifty if a day,' but she was not quite so old as that. She was one of those women who seem to be cut out for motherhood, and to have missed their vocation by not marrying, just as a born artist would have missed his if he had never handled a brush or a pen. Fortunately, such women usually find somebody else's children round whom to throw their all-embracing tenderness. Miss Waterhouse had found the engaging family of Grafton, and loved them just as if they had been her own. It was probably a good deal owing to her that George Grafton had not made a second marriage. Men whose wives die young, leaving them with a family of small children, sometimes do so for their sake. But the young Graftons had missed nothing in the way of feminine care; their father had had no anxiety on their account during their childhood, and they had grown into companions to him, in a way that they might not have done if they had had a step-mother. He owed more than he knew to the Dragon, though he knew that he owed her a great deal. She was of importance in the house, but she was self-effacing. He was the centre round which everything moved. He received a great deal from his children that they would have given to their mother if she had been alive. He was a fortunate man, at the age of fifty; for family affection is one of the greatest gifts of life, and he had it in full measure.

      "We've found the very house, boys," he said, as the three of them came in. "Abington Abbey, in Meadshire. Here you are. Replete with every modern comfort and convenience. Cara and I are going to take a day off to-morrow and go down to have a look at it."

      Beatrix took up the photographs. "Yes, I like that house," she said. "I think you've struck it this time, darling. I'm sorry I can't come with you. I'm going to fence. But I trust to you both entirely."

      "Do you think Uncle Jim will like you taking a day off, George, dear?" asked Barbara. "You had two last week, you know. You mustn't neglect your work. I don't. The Dragon won't let me."

      "Barbara, darling," said Miss Waterhouse in a voice of gentle expostulation, "I don't think you should call your father George. It isn't respectful."

      Barbara kissed her. "You don't mind, do you, Daddy?" she asked.

      "Yes, I do, from you," he said. "You're my infant in arms. 'Daddy' is much prettier from little girls."

      "Darling old thing!" she said. "You shall have it your own way. But we do spoil you. Now about this Abington Abbey. Are there rats? If so, I won't go there."

      "Is there a nice clergyman?" asked Beatrix. "You and Caroline must call on the clergyman, and tell me what he's like when you come home; and how many children he has; and all about the neighbours. A nice house is all very well, but you want nice people too. Somebody you can make fun of."

      "B darling," expostulated the Dragon again. "I don't think you should set out by making fun of people. You will want to make friends of your neighbours, not fun of them."

      "We can do both," said Beatrix. "Will you be the Squire, dear? I should like you to be a little Squire. You'd do it awfully well, better than Uncle Jim."

      Sir James Grafton was George's elder brother, and head of the bank. He was a good banker, but a better chemist. He had fitted himself up a laboratory in his country house, and spent as much of his time in it as possible, somewhat to the detriment of his duties as a landowner.

      "It will be great fun being Squire's daughters," said Caroline. "I'm glad we are going to have a house of our very own. When you only take them for a month or two you feel like a Londoner all the time. B, you and I will become dewy English girls. I believe it will suit us."

      "I don't want to become a dewy English girl just yet," said Beatrix. "It's all very well for you. You've had two seasons. Still, I shan't mind living in the country a good part of the year. There's always plenty to do there. But I do hope there'll be a nice lot of people about. Is it what they call a good residential neighbourhood, Daddy? They always make such a lot of that."

      "I don't know much about Meadshire," said Grafton. "I think it's a trifle stuffy. People one never sees, who give themselves airs. Still, if we don't like them we needn't bother ourselves about them. We can get our own friends down."

      "I'm not sure that's the right spirit," said Caroline. "I want to do the thing thoroughly. The church is very near the house, isn't it? I hope we're not right in the middle of the village too. You want to be a little by yourself in the country."

      The photographs, indeed, showed the church—a fine square-towered Early English structure—directly opposite the front door of the house, the main part, of which was late Jacobean. The cloisters and the old rambling mediæval buildings of the Abbey were around the corner, and other photographs showed them delightfully irregular and convincing. But the gardens and the park enclosed it all. The village was a quarter of a mile away, just outside one of the Lodge gates. "I asked all about that," said Grafton, explaining it to them.

      They gathered round the tea-table in their comfortable luxurious room—a happy affectionate family party. Their talk was all of the new departure that was at last to be made, for all of them took it for granted that they really had found the very house at last, and the preliminary visit and enquiries and negotiations were not likely to reveal any objections or difficulties.

      George Grafton had been looking for a country house in a leisurely kind of way for the past ten years, and with rather more determination for about two. He belonged to the class of business man to whom it is as natural to have a country house as to have a London house, not only for convenience in respect of his work, but also for his social pleasures. He had been brought up chiefly in the country, at Frayne, in the opulent Sevenoaks region, which his brother now inhabited. He had usually taken a country house furnished during some part of the year, sometimes on the river for the summer months, sometimes for the winter, with a shoot attached to it. His pleasures were largely country pleasures. And his children liked what they had had of country life, of which they had skimmed the cream, in the periods they had spent in the houses that he had taken, and in frequent short visits to those of friends and relations. In the dead times of the year they had come back to London, to their occupations and amusements there. One would have said that they had had the

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