The precise year I do not remember, nor, consequently, my own exact age; but I must have been about fourteen. George Verner, Mary's brother--poor fellow! I saw his death registered, the other day, in that odious corner of the _Times_--was my class-mate and play-mate at a school some few miles from London. He was a good-looking and good-tempered fellow, if not remarkable for his abilities. It chanced that I was--in the choice language of the time and place--"a dab at Latin verses." I helped George once in a while with his exercises; and once in a while with the mince-pies, that his mother's a cook used to send him on the sly. The first time that I saw her--Mary Verner I mean, not the cook--was on a whole holiday; George, who lived in the neighbourhood, had invited me to pass it with him. The old family coach came for us at ten o'clock, with the fat old horses and the fat old family coachman, just for all the world as you may often meet them in the story-books that are called "exceedingly natural," and as you now-a-days rarely find them in real life. Pony-phaetons, britzkas, coupés, "Croydon-baskets," and nondescript vehicles that, being neither close carriages nor open, are palmed off as both--these have superseded the full-bodied of my early recollections. I fancy that I see her now.... You perceive that though I note the modern change in the carriage department, I recognize none such in the phraseology of our tongue. I fancy I see her now. You may, if you please, alter the wording; but that's the plain English of it. As we drove up the sweep that led from the lodge to the front entrance of a very beautiful suburban villa, I leaned out of the window, with the curiosity natural to a boy of fourteen, on strange ground. Mary Verner--I knew, by the family likeness, that she was George's elder sister, the moment my eye lighted on her--was trimming or watering her geraniums, in one of the recesses on either side of the porch. "Here, Mary, here's Cuthbert _tertius_," said George, running up the steps, and pushing me before him. "I know him; how d'ye do? I'm glad to see you," was the frank reception, spoken in a clear, round-toned, springy voice, that seemed to drop without effort out of a rose-lipped mouth well-filled with well-knit teeth. And as she spoke smilingly, she opened a pair of large brown eyes that I have since thought--for boys don't know much about the law of colours--were designed to harmonize with what we call a clear brunette complexion. Certainly, if the ballad of "The Nut Brown Mayde" be a model imitation of the antique, Mary Verner might have sat for the portrait.