Going up the garden path to the great house you will meet a stately lady stepping sedately down from it. If her welcome has a touch of frigidity, lay it not to her charge, good lady. In truth, her lord might have given her a little warning that a stranger was coming to supper. Then had she time to get Gillian to add a dish of black-caps and a lèche to the bill of fare, and herself to change into her scarlet gown and coif. Whereas, now! Indeed, the fare is plain enough, as you will presently discover when you are seated at Master More’s right hand at the long table in the great hall. But dainty though you be at your sizes, on ordinary occasions, it will be odds if you have ever set down to a meal more to your taste, or eaten anything with a greater appetite than the salt meat, and coarse fish, and thick slices from the cob-loaf, flavoured, as these are, with the “Attic Salt,” for which this house is famous. After supper someone will suggest a stroll through the garden; and you will accept the more readily since you hear Dame Alice say that Gillian needs her superintendence in the kitchen. As you rise from table your eye, through the long, wide lattice, catches a glimpse of glowing flower-beds and blossoming hedges, and you compliment your host on the beautiful home he has made for himself. Is it fancy, or does a slight shadow really fall on his laughing face, as if he felt in how short a time he must bid it all good-bye? It would seem as if Margaret noticed the little cloud also, and her homely, clever face, so like her father’s in colouring and feature and expression, reflects it lovingly. But she knows how to conjure away his sadness. “Shall we not go to the Academia first, and show you to what good use we have put the day?” she asks him, laying her hand on his arm and turning her dear face up to his. “Well proposed, Meg,” he says, tucking her arm under his own, and so leading the way up the broad oak stairs—you following among the others. “How charming!” is your first exclamation as you enter the schoolroom. And, indeed, you are right. No more delightful room can be imagined than this panelled-oak chamber, with deep, low, roomy window-seats, and classic tapestry, flapping in the cool breeze from the river. After you have spoken a word with Master Gunnel, the tutor (whom you have noticed slip away early from the supper table, and find again here with young John Clement, with a Greek text between them) you will be conducted to the various desks, and shown their contents by their several owners. On Bessy’s you will find a “Livy” most probably, on Daisy Middleton’s a “Sallust,” and on Margaret’s a “Saint Augustine,” with her father’s marks “where she is to read and where desist.” Then Master Gunnel will conduct you to his own high desk, and take therefrom some of their traductions, at the purity and elegance of which, if you have any skill in Latin style, you will be completely amazed.