would ever turn out to be like his father? and tried to recollect whether Richard had ever been so kind, so considerate of any one’s comfort as Val was of Vi’s. Was it perhaps possible that, instead of her own failure, this romance, so prettily begun, might come to such a climax of happiness as romances all feign to end in? Mary, I fear, though she was so sensible, became slightly foolish as she sat under the big beech, and looked at the two in the middle of the stream together, Esk roaring by over his rocks, and making the words with which she called them back quite inaudible. How handsome Val looked, and how pretty and poetic his little companion! The bank of wood opposite was all tinted with autumn colour, rich and warm. It was a picture which any painter would have loved, and it went to Mary’s heart. “But you are too big, Val, to play at the Babes in the Wood nowadays,” said old Lady Eskside, with a little wrinkle in her brow, when she heard of the freak; “and I wonder the Pringles leave that poor little thing by herself at the Hewan, sometimes for days together. They say it’s for her health; but I think it would be much better for her health if she were under her mother’s eye.” “You must remember that I was with them,” said Mary, “representing her mother, or a middle-aged supervision at least.” “My dear,” said Lady Eskside, half angry, half smiling, as she shook her finger at her favourite, “I have my doubts that you are just a romantic gowk; though you might know better.” “Yes, I might know better--if experience could teach,” said Mary; but experience so seldom teaches, notwithstanding all that is said to the contrary. And Mary could not but reflect that Lady Eskside had not frowned, but smiled, upon her own delusion. Perhaps in such cases parental frowns are safer than smiles. CHAPTER XXI.