After this, as his interest in the stage evidently languished, Chris tried Art. Did he sketch? No, young Mr. Browne didn’t sketch himself, but his brother Algernon did; awfully well, too, so that everybody said it was simply disgraceful laziness, and nothing else, which kept him from exhibiting at the Academy. And this was the limit of young Mr. Browne’s interest in Art. “No doubt, living down here so close to the sea, you take more interest in yachting and boating than anything else?” “Well, I can’t say I’m much of a sailor myself,” answered Mr. Browne, modestly. “But Guy--that’s my eldest brother--can sail a yacht better than any of those men who get their living by it. My father keeps a little yacht, and I assure you that when they’re out in dirty weather the captain gives the boat over to Guy.” “Indeed!” said Chris, with as little incredulity as possible. And at last, tired of fishing about in these unpromising waters, she came straight to the point with, “And what is your favourite recreation? Or are you too studious to have one?” “Oh, no! Walter’s the studious one of the family. He’ll make a name for himself some day, for he’s got the real stuff in him, that chap.” “So that you’re the idle one, who looks on and does nothing?” “I’m afraid I am; but they’re all so clever that there’s nothing left for me. And I think even they are cut out by my cousins at Colchester. It’s an odd thing, but there are three distinct branches of the Browne family, one at Colchester, one here, and one as far north as Caithness, though we haven’t the remotest idea how they got up there.” “In the Wars of the Roses, perhaps,” suggested Chris, wildly, feeling that she must say something, and that it didn’t much matter what it was. Young Mr. Browne quite caught at the notion. “Very likely,” said he, waking up into vivid interest. “Any national convulsion like that causes the great families to shift from their old places, and distribute themselves over the country. I daresay such disturbances do some hidden good in that way; don’t you think so?” “Oh, no doubt,” answered Chris, feebly, wishing that she were on the arm of the brother who could waltz better than anybody else. The next partner she had was a little man, nearly a head shorter than herself, as dark as young Mr. Browne was fair. He was of a different type, too--the type that goes up to town now and then, and thinks it the proper thing to speak of the place it lives in as “this hole.” In essentials, however, there was a stronger resemblance between young Mr. Cullingworth’s way of looking at life and young Mr. Browne’s than the former would have been ready to admit. “Do you like this place?” was his first, almost contemptuous question. “Yes, I like it better than any place I have ever lived in,” answered Chris, exuberantly. “I don’t seem ever to have known before what fresh air was.”