After the morning’s examination and placing of the boys, there was a half-holiday; and the brother and sister set forth to enjoy it together, for Kenminster was a place with special facilities for enjoyment. It was built as it were within a crescent, formed by low hills sloping down to the river; the Church, school, and other remnants of the old collegiate buildings lying in the flat at the bottom, and the rest of the town, one of the small decayed wool staples of Somerset, being in terraces on the hill-side, with steep streets dividing the rows. These were of very mixed quality and architecture, but, as a general rule, improved the higher they rose, and were all interspersed with gardens running up or down, and with a fair sprinkling of trees, whose budding green looked well amid the yellow stone. On the summit were some more ornamental villa-like houses, and grey stone buildings with dark tiled roofs, but the expansion on that side had been checked by extensive private grounds. There were very beautiful woods coming almost close to the town, and in the absence of the owner, a great moneyed man, they were open to all those who did not make themselves obnoxious to the keepers; and these, under an absentee proprietor, gave a free interpretation to rights of way. Thither were the Ogilvies bound, in search of primrose banks, but their way led them past two or three houses on the hill-top, one of which, being constructed on supposed Chinese principles of architecture, was known to its friends as “the Pagoda,” to its foes as “the Folly.” It had been long untenanted, but this winter it had been put into complete repair, and two rooms, showing a sublime indifference to consistency of architecture, had been lately built out with sash windows and a slated roof, contrasting oddly with the frilled and fluted tiles of the tower from which it jutted. Suddenly there sounded close to their ears the words--“School time, my dear!” Starting and looking round for some impertinent street boy, Mr. Ogilvie exclaimed, “What’s that?” “Mother Carey! We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.” “See, there,” exclaimed Mary, and a great parrot was visible on the branch of a sumach, which stretched over the railings of the low wall of the pagoda garden. “O you appropriate bird,--you surely ought not to be here!” To which the parrot replied, “Hic, haec, hoc!” and burst out in a wild scream of laughing, spreading her grey wings, and showing intentions of flying away; but Mr. Ogilvie caught hold of the chain that hung from her leg. Just then voices broke out-- “That’s Polly! Where is she? That’s you, Jock, you horrid boy.” “Well, I didn’t see why she shouldn’t enjoy herself.” “Now you’ve been and lost her. Poll, Poll!” “I have her!” called back Mr. Ogilvie. “I’ll bring her to the gate.” Thanks came through the hedge, and the brother and sister walked on.