‘O no; there is no probability of that.’ ‘There’s no saying. But what I want to be at now—and mind you, I’m not doubting you, and I’m not like to doubt Madge—what I want to be at is that while you are away in foreign parts you may change your mind—hold hard a minute—Madge may change hers. Heaps of things may happen. So that all I meant by what I said to her the other night is that you should both be welcome to change if you think it best for yourselves. So there are to be no bindings and pledges atween you. If you come back and are of the same mind and she is content, I will not be against you. Is it a bargain? It is a fair one, though you mayn’t think it now; but you are not the lad I take you for if you don’t own it to be common-sense and agree to it.’ ‘I cannot see anything in it to disturb us,’ said Philip, ‘since you leave us free to please ourselves.’ ‘Ay, but you understand that when I say _free_, I mean it. If you are going back to the house, you can tell Madge everything I’ve said.’ ‘We could not desire any other arrangement. I am content, and she will be. Whatever your tiff with my father may be about, it will not bother us.’ ‘Ah, you had better wait till you hear what he has to say,’ observed the yeoman, with a droll shadow of a grin, as if he again recalled that joke which amused but did not please him. A ROMANCE OF ALMANACS. If any book deserves the name of ‘irrepressible,’ it is the almanac. Notwithstanding its great antiquity, it is still important; and though we grow old, it renews its youth every year, and greets us regularly with a kind of good-natured, ‘Here I am again!’ The oldest almanac in existence is an Egyptian one, and may be seen in the British Museum. Buried nearly three thousand years ago with some human contemporary of Rameses the Great, it has been brought to light again, and copied in fac-simile. Twenty-five columns are wholly or partially preserved. The fortunate days are marked in black ink, and the unfortunate in red—a curious instance of a superstition which European nations have reversed. It contains observations about religious ceremonies, cautions against unlucky times, and predictions as to the fate of children born on certain days. But apart from this immense antiquity, we find almanacs early occupying an important part in the Christian economics. Indeed, to churchmen and to church-goers, they soon became indispensable; the more so, as fast days, feast days, and saints’ days increased in number. Written almanacs of later date have not been traced farther back than the second century; but from the eighth to the fifteenth there are many beautiful specimens in existence. For every Missal, Psalter, Breviary, &c., had a calendar in the beginning, pointing out to the faithful the Church’s fasts and feasts; and King Athelstan’s Psalter, 703 A.D., also exhibits lunar tables.