and of his own particular favour with his heroine he made no small capital among his envious schoolmates. A beautiful boy was young Elidore, bidding fair to be a worthy successor to his father's ancient name and estate, and in his black velvet suit and deep point-lace collar, over which his thick auburn curls clustered, and with his handsome features and bright brown eyes, a picturesque occupant of the ancient halls he dearly loved to frequent. Born many years after their marriage, he was the idol of his parents' hearts, and Primrose loved the boy with scarcely less devotion. "When I am grown up I shall marry you, Primrose," he remarked one day, as he lay at full length upon the hearthrug playing with her favourite spaniel. "I think it is very unkind of all these brave knights in the valley not to have married you long ago!" "Perhaps she would have none of them, my son," said Lady Rosamond, glancing at Master Vere, who had been engrossed in deep conversation with Lady Shanno, but started with a look of mingled amusement and pain at the boy's speech, and clasped his hand tenderly round the slender fingers which sought his. "Perchance they are all at this very moment dying for love of her and she will but say them nay! Be not over bold, my son, for it may be Primrose doth not choose to marry." "She will marry me," said the boy confidently. "And I shall give her dresses of gold and silver, as many dresses as the great Queen Elizabeth, and she shall go out hunting with me in the forest with a falcon on her wrist! How all the boys will envy Sir Elidore of Caer Caradoc! Unless," and he suddenly glanced suspiciously at the chaplain, and his voice took a tone of anxiety--"unless Master Vere marries her first! If you very much want to marry her, Master Vere," he added magnanimously, though with a sigh, "you may have her, for it will be rather long before I am a man, and perhaps she may get tired of waiting. Master Taylor says one must never keep a lady waiting!" A shout of laughter at this climax covered the blushing discomfiture of Primrose, who said gently; "You shall ever be my own gallant champion, Elidore; but do you see these grey hairs on my head? By the time you have your falcon ready for my wrist I shall be too old to go a-hunting, and my hairs will all be white. Then you will perchance not love me quite as now?" "I shall love you when you are as white as the boatman," answered the child promptly; "and I know you are not yet old at all, although you have so many silvery hairs. Master Vere has many of them too, and he is not old either, for Master Taylor has told me that he is himself just one year older than you, Master Vere, and he is but thirty-five! Indeed, mother, he will not chide me for telling, for it was but yesterday that he wrote for me in my copy-book, 'Age is honourable.' So if I tell an age I must be 'honourable' too!"