"Oh, didn’t I. Not to you and Aunt Esperance, perhaps, but you should have heard me when I got outside—— "I don’t like it, Edmund, and I wonder your masters have not found fault with you." "They think I can’t help it, and it makes them laugh—you should hear me say my collect exactly like Sandie Croall——" "Indeed I wish to hear nothing of the kind," said Mr. Wycherly in dignified reproof. "I can’t think why you should copy the lower classes in your mode of speech." "I’m a Bethune," Edmund replied in an offended voice. "I _want_ people to know I’m a Scot." "Your name is quite enough to make them sure of that," Mr. Wycherly argued, "and you may take it from me that Scottish gentlemen don’t talk in the least like Sandie Croall." At that particular moment Edmund was busily engaged in doing a handspring on the end of the sofa, so he forebore to reply. The fact was, that like the immortal "Christina McNab" Edmund had, early in his career at school, decided that to be merely "Scotch" was ordinary and uninteresting, but to be "d—d Scotch" was both distinguished and amusing, and he speedily attained to popularity and even a certain eminence among his schoolfellows when he persisted in answering every question with a broadness of vowel and welter of "r’s" characteristic of those whom Mr. Wycherly called "the peasantry of Burnhead." Moreover, he used many homely and expressive adjectives that were seized upon by his companions as a new and sonorous form of slang. Altogether Edmund was a social success in the school world. His report was not quite equally enthusiastic, but, as he philosophically remarked to Montagu, "It would be monotonous for Guardie if we both had good reports, and your’s makes you out to be a fearful smug." Whereupon Montagu suitably chastised his younger brother with a slipper, and the subject was held over to the next debate. Presently there came a meek little tinkle from the side-door bell. "That’ll be the Griffin," cried Edmund joyfully; "I’ll open to her." It _was_ the Griffin, and their troubles began in earnest. *CHAPTER II* *THE HOUSE OPPOSITE* "Still on the spire the pigeons flutter; Still by the gateway flits the gown; Still on the street, from corbel and gutter, Faces of stone look down. Faces of stone, and other faces...." A. T. QUILLER-COUCH. Mrs. Griffin was not in the least like her name. She was a sidling, snuffling, apologetic little woman, who, whenever a suggestion was made, always acquiesced with breathless enthusiasm, gasping: "Yessir; suttingly sir; _any_think you please sir."