"Yes, dearest, more than to you for the moment: for he has come a long way to see us, and he will soon have to go away again." When this was first explained to him, Pippo inquired particularly when his Uncle John was going away, and was delighted to hear that it was to be very soon. However, as he grew older the boy began to take great pleasure in Uncle John, and hung upon his arm when they went out for their walks, and instead of endeavouring to monopolise his mother, turned the tables upon her by monopolising this the only man who belonged to him, and to whom he turned with the instinct of budding manhood. John too was very willing to be thus appropriated, and it came to pass that now and then Elinor was left out, or left herself out of the calculation, urging that the walk they were planning was too far for her, or too steep for her, or too something, so that the boy might have the enjoyment of the man's society all to himself. This changed the position in many ways, and I am not sure that at first it did not cost Elinor a little thus to stand aside and put herself out of that first place which had always been by all of them accorded to her. But if this was so, it was soon lost in the consideration of how good it was for Pippo to have a man like John to talk to and to influence him in every way. A man like John! That was the thing; not a common man, not one who might teach him the baseness, or the frivolity, or the falsehood of the world, but a good man, who was also a distinguished man, a man of the world in the best sense, knowing life in the best sense, and able to modify the boy's conception of what he was to find in the world, as women could never do. "For after all that can be said, we are not good for much on those points, mother," Mrs. Compton would say. "I don't know, Elinor; I doubt whether I would exchange my own ideas for John's," the elder lady replied. "Ah, perhaps, mother; but for Pippo his experience and his knowledge will do so much. A boy should not be brought up entirely with women any more than a girl should be with men." "I have often thought, my dear," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "if in God's providence it had been a girl instead of a boy----" "Oh!" said the younger mother, with a flush, "how can you speak--how could you think of any possible child but Pippo? I would not give him for a score of girls." "And if he had been a girl you would not have changed him for scores of boys," said Mrs. Dennistoun, who added after a while, with a curious sense of competition, and a determination to allow no inferiority, "You forget, Elinor, that my only child is a girl." The elder lady (whom they began to call the old lady) showed a great deal of spirit in defence of her own.