Perhaps she might have pined for companions of her own age, but that fortune had provided her with some near by. At the entrance of the lane where she lived, but fronting on a wider thoroughfare, was the house of Mrs. Wilson, a widow of good means and family, who filled less than her proper space among her own connections, for she went out but little, being engrossed with the care and education of her two delicate little boys to a degree which rendered her fatiguing as a companion--the poorness of their physical constitutions, and the excellence of their moral natures, being her one unending theme. They were not strong enough for the most private of schools, and were too good to be exposed to its temptations, and always had a governess at home. "Henny" and "Cocky" Wilson--their names were Henry and Cockburn, and their light red hair, combed into scanty crests on top of their heads, had suggested these soubriquets--were the amusement of their mother's contemporaries, and the scorn of their own. A hundred tales were told of them: as, how when Mrs. Wilson first came home from abroad, where she had lived long after her husband's death there, she brought her boys to Sunday-school, with the audible request to the superintendent that as they were such good little children, they might, if possible, be placed among those of similar, if not equal, qualities; thereby provoking the whole school for the next month to a riotous behaviour which poor Mr. Milliken found it difficult to subdue. Mrs. Wilson's friends made some efforts to induce their boys to be friendly with hers, with the result that one July evening, Eugene Talbot, a bright-eyed, curly-haired little dare-devil, who led the revels, patronisingly invited them to join a swimming party after dark in the reservoir which supplied Medford with water--one of those illegal, delicious sprees which to look back on stirs the blood of age. Henny and Cocky gave no answer till they had gone, as in duty bound, to consult their mother, who replied: "My dears, I think this would be a very uncomfortable amusement. Should you not enjoy much more taking a bath in our own bathroom, with plenty of soap and hot-water?" It required a great effort of self-control on Eugene's part not to knock the heads of the two together when they reported their mother's opinion to him _verbatim_; but he had the feeling that it would be as mean to hit one of the Wilsons as to hit a girl, and he only sent them to Coventry, where they grew up, apparently careless. They were content at home, and they could now and then play with Lucy Morton, who had contrived to make their acquaintance through the garden fence, and who, though three years younger than Cocky, the youngest, was quite as advanced in every way.