And thus the soft-paced time went on, gently, dallying with the children, spinning out long tranquil days for them, and years that seemed as if they would never be over, as he does not do with their elders. They grew up slowly like the grass, which never shows itself in the act of growing, but is, while yet we are unaware of it; the happiest of all life’s various periods--not only to the younglings, who are unconscious of it, but also to the fathers and mothers, who sometimes have an inkling of the truth. It looks long while it is in progress, thank heaven--though after, I suppose, when it is over, and the birds are out of the nest, it is like everything else in life, as short to look back upon as a tale that is told. But in the meantime there is little more to be said than that the children grew. And by-and-by Rosscraig House fell into sudden shadow, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud, and the voices in it died down into subdued sounds of old people’s voices, as had been the case before the child came to it, turning everything topsy-turvy. Val had been sent to school. CHAPTER XIII. The school that Valentine Ross, Lord Eskside’s grandson and heir, was sent to was, naturally, Eton. His father had been educated there, but not his grandfather, who belonged to an older fashion in education as in everything else, and was Scotch to his fingers’ tips, and to every shade of idea in his mind. Valentine was placed with the brother of the tutor who had succeeded so indifferently with his early training--a kind of mingled compensation for that failure, and keeping up of old associations--for Mr Grinder’s father had been Richard’s tutor--which satisfied Lord and Lady Eskside. The boy’s departure was no small trial to the old people. Each of them said something to him privately before he went away. Lord-Eskside took him out for a last walk, and showed him the new feus that had been marked out, and told him confidentially--recognising for the first time his partially grown-up condition--of the improvements he had been making, and the addition to the rent-roll of the estate which the feus would give--“enough to pay your school expenses, Val,” he said; and then he gave his grandson his parting advice.