But Anna was obdurate. She should never see any one in society like Uncle Clem. She had had a taste two years ago, and she wished for no more. She should see the best pictures at the studios before leaving town, and she neither could nor would leave her uncle and aunt to themselves. So the matter remained in abeyance till the place of sojourn had been selected and tried; and meantime Gerald spent what remained of the Easter vacation in a little of exhibitions with Anna, a little of slumming with Emilia, a little of society impartially with swells and artists, and a good deal of amiable lounging and of modern reading of all kinds. His aunt watched, enjoyed, yet could not understand, his uncle said, that he was an undeveloped creature. CHAPTER V. -- A HAPPY SPRITE Such trifles will their hearts engage, A shell, a flower, a feather; If none of these, a cup of joy It is to be together.--ISAAC WILLIAMS. A retired soldier, living with his sister in a watering-place, is apt to form to himself regular habits, of which one of the most regular is the walking to the station in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General Mohun beheld, emerging on the platform, a slight figure in a grey suit, bag in hand, accompanied by a pretty pink-cheeked, fair-haired, knicker-bockered little boy, whose air of content and elation at being father’s companion made his sapphire eyes goodly to behold. “Mr. Underwood! I am glad to see you.” “I thought I would run down and look at the house you were so good as to mention for my sister, and let this chap have a smell of the sea.” There was a contention between General Mohun’s hospitality and Lancelot’s intention of leaving his bag at the railway hotel, but the former gained the day, the more easily because there was an assurance that the nephew who slept at Miss Mohun’s for the sake of his day-school would take little Felix Underwood under his protection, and show him his curiosities. The boy’s eyes grew round, and he exclaimed-- “Foolish guillemots’ eggs?” “He is in the egg stage,” said his father, smiling. “I won’t answer for guillemots,” said the General, “but nothing seems to come amiss to Fergus, though his chief turn is for stones.” There was a connection between the families, Bernard Underwood, the youngest brother of Lance, having married the elder sister of the aforesaid Fergus Merrifield. Miss Mohun, the sister who made a home for the General, had looked out the house that Lance had come to inspect. As it was nearly half-past twelve o’clock, the party went round by the school, where, in the rear of the other rushing boys, came Fergus, in all the dignity of the senior form. “Look at him,” said the General, “those are honours one only gets once or twice in one’s life, before beginning at the bottom again.”