The matutinal service of biscuits was long overdue, Edmund grew impatient, and the corners of his rosy mouth drooped. "I’ve said ’Chahley,’" he announced reproachfully, "and you don’t take me." Mr. Wycherly looked beseechingly at Miss Esperance. "I think he has done his best," he said in deprecating tones, "it is a difficult name for a baby." "Chahlee! Chahlee!" chirped Edmund, beginning to dance again. "Uppie! Uppie!" then turning to his aunt—"I’ve said ’im." "You haven’t said it right—but perhaps—" Miss Esperance wavered. Edmund marched up to his aunt, placed both his dimpled elbows on her knees, and gazing earnestly into her face with bunches of unshed tears still hanging on his lashes, remarked vindictively: "I wis a gate bid ball would come and bounce at you." Miss Esperance burst out laughing and stooped to kiss the red, indignant baby-face. "All the same, my dear son, you must learn to do what you are told." "Me go wiv—Chahlee," Edmund announced triumphantly, as Mr. Wycherly lifted him up. "Am I to call you Charlie, too?" asked Montagu, who was rather jealous where his tutor’s favour was concerned. "Pray, don’t!" exclaimed that gentleman hastily. "Chahlee, Chahlee," crowed Edmund from the safe vantage ground of Mr. Wycherly’s arms as he was carried upstairs. "Deah man, Chahlee." Miss Esperance sat on where she was. Her interference had certainly not improved matters, and she was really perturbed. That she should in any way, however inadvertently and innocently, have rendered Mr. Wycherly in the smallest degree ridiculous was most distressing to her. Had the baby done his best, or was it but one more instance of his supreme subtlety in the avoidance of doing what he was told? Miss Esperance adored Edmund. He was a Bethune from the top curl of his fair hair to his small, straight, pink toes. Handsome, ruddy, with very blue eyes; eyes that changed in colour with his every emotion, even as the sea so many of his forbears had served changes with the passing hours; he was the image of Archie Bethune, his father. He was like her brother, whose name he bore, and still stronger was his likeness to the admiral, her father, that generous and choleric sailor whose memory she so revered. Yet no one knew better than Miss Esperance the faults of the Bethune temperament. Had she not suffered from them herself in the past? And she was painfully anxious to keep in check the wilful impulsiveness so strongly marked in her great-nephew—that taking of their own way, no matter at what cost in tribulation to themselves or suffering to others. How many Bethunes had it ruined in the past! And yet if she rebuked him now it might confuse the baby: and above all, Miss Esperance desired to be just in her dealings with these small creatures committed to her charge. As she sat in the sunshine, with the children’s voices borne to her on the soft winds of early summer, she prayed for guidance.