“Catch me! But we are enlarging the reading-room, and the new press demands space. Then there’s a dining-room for the young men, and what do you think I’ve got? We (not Froggatt, Underwood, and Lamb, but the Church Committee) have bought St. Oswald’s buildings for a coffee hotel and young men’s lodging-house.” “Our own, old house. Oh! is Edgar’s Great Achilles there still?” “I rushed up to see. Alas! the barbarians have papered him out. But what do you think I’ve got? The old cupboard door where all our heights were marked on our birthdays.” “He set it up in his office,” said Gertrude. “I think he danced round it. I know he brought me and all the children to adore it, and showed us, just like a weather record, where every one shot up after the measles, and where Clement got above you, Cherry, and Lance remained a bonny shrimp.” “A great move, but it sounds comfortable,” said Clement. “Yes; for now Lance will get a proper luncheon, as he never has done since dear old Mrs. Froggatt died,” said Gertrude, “and he is an animal that needs to be made to eat! Then the children want schooling of the new-fashioned kinds.” All this had become possible through Fulbert’s legacy between his brothers and unmarried sister, resulting in about £4000 apiece; besides which the firm had gone on prospering. Clement asked what was the present circulation of the ‘Pursuivant’, and as Lance named it, exclaimed-- “What would old Froggatt have said, or even Felix?” “It is his doing,” said Lance, “the lines he traced out.” “My father says it is the writing with a conscience,” said Gertrude. “Yes, with life, faculty, and point, so as to hinder the conscience from being a dead weight,” added Geraldine. “No wonder,” said Lance, “with such contributors as the Harewoods, and such a war-correspondent as Aubrey May.” Just then the door began to open, and a black silk personage disconsolately exclaimed-- “Master Clement! Master Clem! Wherever is the boy gone, when he ought to be in his bed?” “Ha, Sibby!” cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery, withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse. “You see your baby has begun to run alone.” “Ah, Master Lance, ‘twas your doing. You always was the mischief.” “No indeed, Sibby, the long boy did it all by himself, before ever I was in the house; but I’ll bring him back again.” “May I not stay a little longer, Sibby,” said Clement, rather piteously, “to hear Lance sing? I have been looking forward to it all day.” “If ye’ll take yer jelly, sir,” said Sibby, “as it’s fainting ye’ll be, and bringing our hearts into our mouths.” So Sibby administered her jelly, and heard histories of Lance’s children, then, after exacting a promise that Master Lance should only sing once, she withdrew, as peremptory and almost as happy as in her once crowded nursery. “What shall that once be, Clem?” asked Lance. “‘Lead, kindly Light.’” “Is it not too much?” he inquired, glancing towards his widowed sister.