“The Harleys,” said I, “for we’ll postpone for a little, if you please, Derwie, your friends below-stairs; and Mr. Reredos and his sister, and Miss Polly Greenfield, and her little nieces. I fear the womankind will rather predominate in our Easter party--though Maurice Harley, to be sure”---- “Yes--Maurice Harley, to be sure,” said Derwent, still with a smile, “is--what should you call him now, Clare--a host in himself?” “Fellow of Exeter College, Cambridge,” said I, demurely; “he has it on his card.” “Mamma, is Maurice Harley a clergyman?--shouldn’t a clergyman care about people?” said little Derwent; “I don’t think _he_ does. He likes books.” “And what do you mean by people?--and don’t you like books?” I asked. “Oh! yes, sometimes,” said my son; “when there’s pictures in them. But _you_ know what people mean, mamma--quite well! You talk to them, _you_ do--but Maurice Harley puts up his shoulders like this, and looks more tired than Bob Dawkes does after his ploughing--so tired--just as if he could drop down with tiredness. Oh!” cried Derwent, with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, “I would not give our Johnnie for a hundred of _him_.” “A hundred of _him_!” I confess the thought filled me with alarm. In my heart I doubted, with a little shudder of apprehension, whether the country, not to speak of Hilfont, could have survived the invasion of a hundred such accomplished men. “But, Derwie,” said I, recovering from that shock, “if you do not like books except when they have pictures in them, how do you think you are ever to learn all the things that Maurice Harley knows?” “Mr. Sedgwick says he’s a prig,” says little Derwent, with great seriousness, “and I know more things now than he does--I know how to make rabbits’ houses. If you were to get some little white rabbits, mamma, I could make a beautiful house for them. Will Morris taught me how. Oh! papa, don’t you know Will Morris wants to marry little Susan at the shop?--he has her picture, and it’s not the least like her, and I heard Maurice Harley say the photographs _must_ be like, because the sun took them. Does the sun see better than other people? That one’s like you with the paper in your hand; but Will Morris’s picture, instead of being Susan, is anybody in a checked dress.” “I begin to think you will turn out a great critic, Derwie,” said his admiring father, who desired no better than to spend his after-dinner hour listening to the wisdom of his son.