How still the world is to-day! The feathery water-weeds sway, indeed, to and fro, with the motion of the water, but the tall cats'-tails, and all the flags, stand absolutely motionless. I feel vaguely ruffled, and take up my forgotten book. Holding it so as to hide my companion's face from me, I begin to read ostentatiously. He seems content to be silent; lying on the flat of his back, at the bottom of the punt, staring at the sky, and declining the overtures, and parrying the attacks, of Vick, who, having taken advantage of his supine position to mount upon his chest, now stands there wagging her tail, and wasting herself in efforts, mostly futile, but occasionally successful, to lick the end of his nose. A period of quiet elapses, during which, for the sake of appearances, I turn over a page. By-and-by, he speaks. "Algy is your eldest brother, is not he?--get away, you little beast!"--(the latter clause, in a tone of sudden exasperation, is addressed, not to me, but to Vick, and tells me that my pet dog's endeavors have been crowned with a tardy prosperity.) "Yes" (still reading sedulously). "I thought so," with a slight accent of satisfaction. "Why?" cry I, again letting fall my volume, and yielding to a curiosity as irresistible as unwise; for he had meant me to ask, and would have been disobliged if I had not. "We all have our hobbies, don't you know?" he says, shifting his eyes from the sky, and fixing them on the less serene, less amiable object of my face--"some people's is old china--some Elzevir editions--_I_ have a mania for _clocks_--I have one in every room in my house--by-the-by, you have never been over my house--Mrs. Huntley's--she is a dear little woman, but she has her fancies, like the rest of us, and hers is--_eldest sons_!" "But she is married!" exclaim I, stupidly. "What good can they do her, now?"--then, reddening a little at my own simplicity, I go on, hurriedly: "But he is such a boy!--younger than _you_--young enough to be her _son_--it _can_ be only out of good-nature that she takes notice of him." "Yes--true--out of good-nature!" he echoes, nodding, smiling, and speaking with that surface-assent which conveys to the hearer no impression less than acquiescence. "Boys are not much in her way, either," he pursues, carelessly; "generally she prefers such as are of _riper_ years--_much_ riper!" "How spiteful you are!" I say, glad to give my chafed soul vent in words, and looking at him with that full, cold directness which one can employ only toward such as are absolutely indifferent to one. "How she _must_ have snubbed you!" For an instant, he hesitates; then-- "Yes," he says, smiling still, though his face has whitened, and a wrathy red light has come into his deep eyes; "in the pre-Huntley era, I laid my heart at her feet--by-the-way, I must have been in petticoats at the time--and she kicked it away, as she had, no doubt, done--_others_."