Suddenly the children’s voices ceased, for Mr. Wycherly was reading aloud. It was his habit to read to them odd scraps of anything that had happened to please himself, while they munched their biscuits. Sometimes they, or at all events Montagu, understood; as often they did not: but both found some sort of pleasure in the fine English gracefully read. Miss Esperance listened, and as if in answer to her prayer she heard, in Mr. Wycherly’s gentle, cultivated tones, these words: "Love is fitter than fear, gentleness better than beating, to bring up a child rightly in learning." So for a while Baby Edmund was allowed to call Mr. Wycherly very much what he pleased. He occasionally conceded something to convention by addressing him as "Mittah man" or "Mittah Chahlee"—but as a rule he took his own way; finally adopting for Mr. Wycherly Elsa’s usual style of address toward himself, namely, "Dearie." It had never occurred to Mr. Wycherly as possible that anyone should address him as "Dearie," and this particular term of endearment did sound somewhat of an anachronism. But he liked it, he liked it amazingly: and seeing this, Miss Esperance interfered no more. In the end, however, it was Montagu who found a pet name for Mr. Wycherly. "What are you to me?" the little boy asked one day. "Are you an uncle?" "No," said Mr. Wycherly, "I am your guardian." "What’s a guardian?" "Someone who takes care of a child who has lost his parents." "May I call you guardian?" "Certainly, if you wish it." "May Edmund?" "Assuredly." "Then we will—it’s more friendlier than ’Mr.,’ don’t you think?" And it ended in Guardian being abbreviated into ’Guardie,’ so that Mr. Wycherly was, after all, the only member of the household who was permitted a diminutive. *CHAPTER IX* *CUPID ABROAD* "Cupid abroad was lated in the night, His wings were wet with ranging in the rain; Harbour he sought, to me he took his flight, To dry his plumes," I heard the boy complain; "I ope’d the door, and granted his desire. I rose myself, and made the wag a fire." Everyone in the neighbourhood of Burnhead called Lady Alicia’s youngest daughter "Bonnie Margaret," so full of charm and gaiety and gentleness was she. Not all the year was Lady Alicia at the "big hoose": since the death of her husband—worthy David Carruthers, late Advocate—she always wintered in Edinburgh; but with May, Bonnie Margaret came back to Burnhead, unless, indeed, as had happened lately, she spent that month in London with one of her married sisters. But at all events some part of the summer saw her back at Burnhead, and the sun seemed to shine the brighter for her coming.