"I'm afraid Violet will be a dreadfully large creature," Mrs. Tempest murmured plaintively, as the girl grew and flourished; that lady herself being ethereal, and considering her own appearance a strictly correct standard of beauty. How could it be otherwise, when she had been known before her marriage as "the pretty Miss Calthorpe?" "This is very nice, you know, Vixen," said Roderick critically, as Titmouse made a greedy snap at an apple, and was repulsed with a gentle pat on his nose, "but it can't go on for ever. What'll you do when you are grown up?" "Have a horse instead of a pony," answered Vixen unhesitatingly. "And will that be all the difference?" "I don't see what other difference there can be. I shall always love papa, I shall always love hunting, I shall always love mamma--as much as she'll let me. I shall always have a corner in my heart for deal old Crokey; and, perhaps," looking at him mischievously, "even an odd corner for you. What difference can a few more birthdays make in me? I shall be too big for Titmouse, that's the only misfortune; but I shall always keep him for my pet, and I'll have a basket-carriage and drive him when I go to see my poor people. Sitting behind a pony is an awful bore when one's natural place is on his back, but I'd sooner endure it than let Titmouse fancy himself superannuated." "But when you're grown up you'll have to come out, Vixen. You'll be obliged to go to London for a season, and be presented, and go to no end of balls, and ride in the Row, and make a grand marriage, and have a page all to yourself in the _Court Journal_." "Catch me--going to London!" exclaimed Vixen, ignoring the latter part of the sentence. "Papa hates London, and so do I. And as to riding in Rotten Row, _je voudrais bien me voir faisant cela_," added Vixen, whose study of the French language chiefly resulted in the endeavour to translate English slang into that tongue. "No, when I grow up I shall take papa the tour of Europe. We'll see all those places I'm worried about at lessons--Marathon, Egypt, Naples, the Peloponnesus, _tout le tremblement_--and I shall say to each of them, 'Oh, this is you, is it? What a nuisance you've been to me on the map.' We shall go up Mount Vesuvius, and the Pyramids, and do all sorts of wild things; and by the time I come home I shall have forgotten the whole of my education." "If Miss McCroke could hear you!" "She does, often. You can't imagine the wild things I say to her. But I love her--fondly." A great bell clanged out with a vigorous peal, that seemed to shake the old stable. "There's the first bell. I must run and dress. Come to the drawing-room and see mamma." "But, Vixen, how can I sit down to dinner in such a costume," remonstrated Rorie, looking down at his brown shooting-suit, leather gaiters, and tremendous boots--boots which, instead of being beautified with blacking, were suppled with tallow; "I can't do it, really."