It was a bright morning in March, the skies full of the beauty of spring, the air fresh with showers, the sun shining; the buds were beginning to swell on the trees, and primroses coming out in the suburban gardens. Jock looked somewhat forlorn, all by himself, in the front seat of the carriage, buttoned closely into his great-coat, and looking smaller than ever as his delicate little face looked out from the thick collar; opposite to Lady Randolph’s portly person, in her great furred mantle, he looked like a little waxen image; and he sat very stiffly, trying to draw up his thin little legs beneath him, but now and then receiving a warning glance from Lucy, who was extremely nervous about his manners. They were both amused, however, by the long drive across London, and up the hill toward the northern suburbs. Lady Randolph did not know the way. She took almost as much interest as they did in the animated streets. “Jock, little Jock, there is the heath. Do you see the big furze bushes?” she said. “How strange to see a place so wild, yet so near town!” “It is not so good as our common,” Jock said. Yet school took a more smiling aspect after he had got a glimpse of the broken ground and wild vegetation. They drew up at last after a troublesome search (for Lady Randolph’s coachman would not have betrayed any knowledge of that out-of-the-way locality for worlds, it was as much as his reputation was worth) before a little new house with a bay-window and a small square patch of green called a garden. Through the bay-window there was a dim appearance visible of some one seated at a table writing; but when the carriage stopped there was evidently a great commotion in the house, and the dim figure disappeared. Some one hastily opening an upper window, a sound of bells rung, and of noisy footsteps running up and down the stairs, were all audible to the little party seated in the carriage, who were amused by all this pantomime. “She will have a headache,” Lady Randolph said, “as soon as she sees us.”