“It’s nothing nice, you may be quite sure, it’s probably got something to do with lessons. Perhaps they want to examine you before you go to school,” she added with a fiendish laugh. Her mouth was terrible in its hardness. Mrs. Fellowes stooped down quickly and kissed her on it. “Gwen, love, you don’t know, something very nice may be going to happen to you, the very nicest thing that has ever yet happened.” Gwen looked up at her astonished, some tone in her soft voice touched her. “I wonder—” she said slowly, “I wish——” “What dear?” “Oh, I don’t think I know,” said she, with a short laugh. “Come on! Gru! Look at the table covered with books and things! I knew it was an exam! Look, Dacre!” When her greetings to her host and hostess were over, Mrs. Fellowes went over to her husband, who was standing by the table of books. “One of the evidences of Christianity to be placed before the infant mind,” he said softly, pointing to _Lord Amberley_. “Another!” and he put his finger on Renan’s _Life of Jesus_. “Good gracious! you’ll stop that?” “If I can—what’s wrong with Gwen?” “I don’t know, I put my foot in it just now by pressing for an explanation.” Dacre, meanwhile, was feeling less than a worm under the concentrated gaze of his parents. After the first remarks concerning health addressed to both children, with a casual allusion to his projected departure for school for Dacre’s benefit, and an earnest request from his mother to consider his teeth and his stomach and to eschew sweet-stuff, “the great temptation of public schools,” she observed sadly, and when some supine observations with regard to things in general had been turned on Gwen, Mr. and Mrs. Waring looked appealingly at each other and subsided into a silent and curious inspection of their son. The dumb endurance of the boy showed a good deal of pluck; he merely wriggled spasmodically from time to time. But he had come to the extremest end of his tether and was on the point of some outbreak, when deliverance reached him in a low swift sigh from his mother, and a queer sudden movement on his father’s part, who pushed back his chair, loosed his wife’s hand with a deprecating “Pray, my love!” and began to speak in a general inoffensive way, fixing his gaze on no one in particular, to Dacre’s infinite relief.