"There is nothing in the world I should like better," he says, with a sort of hurry and eagerness, not very suggestive of a _vieux papa_; "but really--" (seeing me look rather ashamed of my proposition)--"is it _quite_ hopeless? the damage quite irremediable?" "On the contrary," reply I, tucking my gathers in, with a graceful movement, at the band of my gown, "five minutes will make it as good as new--at least" (casting a disparaging eye over its frayed and taffy-marked surface), "as good as it ever will be in this world." A little pause. "I suppose I have lost my way," he says, thinking, I fancy, that I look rather eager to be gone. "I am never very good at the geography of a strange house." "Yes," say I, promptly; "you came through _our_ door, instead of your own; shall I show you the way back?" "Since I have come so far, may not I come a little farther?" he asks, glancing rather longingly at the half-open school-room door, whence sounds of pious mirth are again beginning to reissue. "Do you mean _really_?" ask I, with a highly-dissuasive inflection of voice. "Please not to-night; we are all higgledy-piggledy--at sixes and sevens! To tell you the truth, we have been _cooking_. I wonder you did not smell it in the drawing-room." Again he looks amused. "May not I cook too? I _can_, though you look disbelieving; there are few people that can beat me at an Irish stew when I set my mind to it." A head (Bobby's) appears round the school-room door. "I say, Nancy, who are you colloquing with out there? I believe you have got hold of our future benefact--" An "oh!" of utter discomfiture, and the head is withdrawn. "I am keeping you," Sir Roger says. "Well, I will say good-night. You will shake hands, won't you, to show that you bear no malice?" "That I will," reply I, heartily stretching out my right hand, and giving his a cordial shake. For was not he at school with father? CHAPTER III.