“Here! there’s reading for you,” said Miss Willsie, throwing upon the family table a little roll of papers. “They tell me there’s something of the kind stirring among yourselves. If there’s one thing I cannot put up with, it’s to see a parcel of young folk setting up to read lessons to the world!” “Not Agnes!” cried Marian eagerly; “only wait till it comes out. I know so well, Miss Willsie, how you will like her book.” “No such thing,” said Miss Willsie indignantly. “I would just like to know--twenty years old, and never out of her mother’s charge a week at a time--I would just like any person to tell me what Agnes Atheling can have to say to the like of me!” “Indeed, nothing at all,” said Agnes, blushing and laughing; “but it is different with Mr Endicott. Now nobody must speak a word. Here it is.” “No! let me away first,” cried Miss Willsie in terror. She was rather abrupt in her exits and entrances. This time she disappeared instantaneously, shaking her hand at some imaginary culprit, and had closed the gate behind her with a swing, before Agnes was able to begin the series of “Letters from England” which were to immortalise the name of Mr Foggo S. Endicott. The New World biographist began with his voyage, and all the “emotions awakened in his breast” by finding himself at sea; and immediately thereafter followed a special chapter, headed “Killiecrankie Lodge.” “How delightful,” wrote the traveller, “so many thousand miles from home, so far away from those who love us, to meet with the sympathy and communion of kindred blood! To this home of the domestic affections I am glad at once to introduce my readers, as a beautiful example of that Old England felicity, which is, I grieve to say, so sadly outbalanced by oppression and tyranny and crime! This beautiful suburban retreat is the home of my respected relatives, Mr F. and his maiden sister Miss Wilhelmina F. Here they live with old books, old furniture, and old pictures around them, with old plate upon their table, old servants in waiting, and an old cat coiled up in comfort upon their cosy hearth! A graceful air of antiquity pervades everything. The inkstand from which I write belonged to a great-grandfather; the footstool under my feet was worked by an old lady of the days of the lovely Queen Mary; and I cannot define the date of the china in that carved cabinet: all this, which would be out of place in one of the splendid palaces of our buzy citizens, is here in perfect harmony with the character of the inmates. It is such a house as naturally belongs to an old country, an old family, and an old and secluded pair.