“I dare say there will be no reason for his living there; but he has promised me to forgive them for misunderstanding and disliking me. And you must promise me the same thing when you grow old enough to see what such a promise means.—Come here, my dear. Stand just where I do, and look up under the eaves. Do you see anything?” “O, I see a little bird moving!” Temmy could not tell what bird it was. He was a rather dull child—usually called uncommonly stupid—as indeed he too often appeared. Whither his wits strayed from the midst of the active little world in which he lived, where the wits of everybody else were lively enough, no one could tell—if, indeed, he had any wits. His father thought it impossible that Temple Temple, heir of Temple Lodge and its fifty thousand acres, should not grow up a very important personage. Mrs. Temple had an inward persuasion, that no one understood the boy but herself. Dr. Sneyd did not profess so to understand children as to be able to compare Temmy with others, but thought him a good little fellow, and had no doubt he would do very well. Mrs. Sneyd’s hopes and fears on the boy’s account varied, while her tender pity was unremitting: and uncle Arthur was full of indignation at Temple for cowing the child’s spirit, and thus blunting his intellect. To all other observers it was but too evident that Temmy did not know a martin from a crow, or a sycamore from a thorn. “That bird is a martin, come to build under our eaves, my dear. If we were to put up a box, I dare say the bird would begin to build in it directly.” Temmy was for putting up a box, and his grandpapa for furnishing him with favourites which should be out of sight and reach of Mr. Temple. In two minutes, therefore, the philosopher was mounted on a high stool, whence he could reach the low eaves; and Temmy was vibrating on tiptoe, holding up at arms’ length that which, being emptied of certain mysterious curiosities, (which might belong either to grandpapa’s apparatus of science, or grandmamma’s of housewifery,) was now destined to hold the winged curiosities which were flitting round during the operation undertaken on their behalf.