But during the entire first course of those tutors, Mr. and Mrs. Waring felt always as if they were suffering from ragged edges. As for Gwen and Dacre, their first taste of reclamation from the savage state, was bitter, sudden, and condign. Civilization seems the last thing in the world capable of soothing the savage breast, especially if the savage who owns it is young and in rude health. Then Mary suffered. It was a hard blow to find her fledglings torn from her in one fell stroke, and only allowed to return at odd moments for repairs to skin and clothes. Poor Mrs. Fellowes fretted herself into a regular feverish attack. As for the tutors themselves, the less said of their sufferings the better. Three succumbed to them in four months. The one that followed, a most excellent person and cut out for a family man, broke off his engagement for fear of consequences, his slight substratum of scientific knowledge having got so much stirred up while at Waring Park, that he grew bewildered. If such results as he had to deal with, he reflected, were to be seen in the green tree what might not come to pass in the dry? And he was well aware of the cloudy ancestry of his lady-love, and on his own side had not very much to boast of. It was unfortunate. But it certainly did seem sacrilegious impertinence in him to attempt what his betters had so egregiously failed in. CHAPTER VII. MANY tutors had come and gone, and much had been endured both from the children’s point of view and from that of the instructors. But time went on unheeding, and Gwen and Dacre were lying under an old cherry-tree in the orchard one day late in August. The sun shone aslant through the crimson-tinted leaves above them, and threw flickering rosy shadows across the faces of the two as they lay there in the cool grass, with wisps of fern under their heads for pillows. Dacre, however, seemed to benefit but little from this arrangement; his head was oftener off its support than on; he twisted and turned and wriggled and plunged, even his toes moved visibly through his thick boots. He was supposed to be reading, and kept up the pretence from time to time, but the words conveyed no sense to his restless eyes, that moved as if they were on wires. Now and again he got irritated and threw the book down with a snort. The sister and brother spent much of their time together nowadays; fate had perhaps quite as much to do with this close companionship as inclination, the groom’s boy and his like, except at stolen moments, being for Dacre things of the past. This and various other reforms had been brought about by Mr. Fellowes and one tutor of an exceptionally strong mind.