Like most ruling ladies, the Lady Elgitha had her favourite, and this favourite was—as was but natural—her son: for had he not paid her the initiatory compliment of inheriting her aquiline features? and as he grew up were not his tastes and feelings in charming harmony with her own? While a child in the nursery he eschewed fairy tales “as rubbish,” and when he became a boy, and went to school, learning as learning was a bore; and he early adopted it as a maxim to give his attention to nothing that “didn’t pay”—an expression which charmed his mother by its shrewdness, but strangely chilled his father, who, in all his life, had never taken such a consideration into account. With a sense of the vital importance of modern languages which is impressed on the brain of our female aristocracy, Lady Elgitha had imported to Sunbridge first a Parisian _bonne_, then a German; and Gilbert, Mark, and Eveline had the opportunity of acquiring a _patois_ which familiarised them with the names of ordinary things, and, it may be, facilitated their subsequent studies in both languages; but little Elgitha was too delicate in the early years of her life to be trusted either to _bonne_ or _fräulein_, and she was permitted to repose on the ample bosom of a comfortable Englishwoman, who was as sweet as a clover-field and about as intelligent; and while she nursed and tended the frail little body, had not the remotest notion of in any way disturbing the little brain, but was more than satisfied to see repeated in his little daughter the features and the sweetness of her father. When Gilbert had attained his seventh year, Lady Elgitha decreed that an erudite curate should be sought out, who, in addition to his clerical duties, should instruct both boys in the mysteries of the Latin grammar, and should prepare Gilbert for Eton, and Mark for the local grammar school, which had a very good reputation; and so, for three years, the boys worked together under the guidance of the Rev. Theophilus Wilkins, who, having rather overtaxed his brain by taking a “double first” at Oxford, was not sorry to rest a little by going back to first principles with the cousins, the elder of whom was interesting as the grandson of an earl, while the orphanage of the younger could hardly fail to awaken his sympathy.