When Dove and her companion got down to this sheltered little place, they found it as usual alive with children. The gathering together from all his friends and relations of whatever small boys and girls they could spare, was a hobby of Mr. Anerley’s. He liked to keep a perpetual children’s party going at Chesnut Bank; and there was not a governess in one of his friends’ houses who did not owe to him many a grateful holiday. Then this monstrous ogre of a materialist, who already smelt of brimstone in the nostrils of the people around, was as careful about the proprieties and go-to-bed prayers of the little ones as he was convinced that amusement ought to be their chief education. Indeed he once caught the Buttons of the small establishment amusing himself and a companion by teaching a little boy to repeat some highly improper phrases, and before the youthful joker knew where he was he felt the lithe curl of a horsewhip round his legs—a sensation he remembered for many a day after while gaily polishing his spoons and washing out his decanters. At this moment a little girl was seated at the piano laboriously playing a hymn-tune possessed of no very recondite chords; while on the lawn in front Mr. Anerley lay at full length, a book between his face and the sunshine. Mrs. Anerley sat on a low chair beside him, also reading, a large deerhound at her feet; while two or three more children were scampering over the lawn, occasionally "coming a cropper" over a croquet-hoop. She was a pretty little woman, with dark brown hair and eyes—nervous, sensitive, and full of the tenderest idealisms—altogether a noble, affectionate, and lovable little woman. Her husband was a rather tall and spare man, with short rough grey hair and whiskers, an aquiline nose, and gentle grey eyes. He was a keen sportsman and a languid student: a man who liked to cover his weaknesses of sentiment with a veil of kindly humour; and seemed to live very easily and comfortably, considering that he was accused of harbouring materialism—that terrible quicklime, which, according to some profound calculators, is about to shrivel up the heavens and the earth, and all the gentle humanities which have been growing up through so many thousand years. "Hillo, Will," said Mr. Anerley, as the young man approached and kissed his mother, "why didn’t you come down last night?" "Old Hubbard got me to stay in town with him that we might go to a supper." "He told me he would likely see you; and asked us all to walk over to the Place in the evening. Poor man, he has never been himself since the Lord Chamberlain refused to let him attend a levee as the Count von Schönstein. Will, when anybody offers you 30,000*l.* a year, don’t take it." "I won’t, father."