"Hurrah! _Ancestors_," she cries, saluting the old pictures on the wall with mock courtesy. "Real dead ancestors in wigs, and you _never_ told me, Philip!" [Illustration: Saluting the old pictures on the wall with mock courtesy.] She is standing, gazing on them joyfully as the luggage is brought in, pointing with her umbrella at a wrinkled judge. "They have seldom received such admiration," he says gently. "Poor old things, they disfigure the walls sadly with their grim faces." "The lady on the left is simpering; and, oh! here is a tiger rug," stumbling over a head on the ground. "I caught my heel on his nose," as Philip prevents her falling by seizing her elbow. "Show me which is my room. I am longing to see it," she continues, taking two steps at a time in her eager ascent. "Sarah," calling to her maid, "bring those three hat boxes and my cloak, there's a good soul! Come on, Philip, I'll race you to the top." He feels as if he is playing with a child, as he rushes over the house after Eleanor. The day of the school treat returns to his mind, he fancies he sees her still, running through the long grass. "Everything is beautiful," she gasps, clasping her hands. "There's a room to be frivolous and lazy in, a study for book learning (I'm going to read no end) and, oh! if you want to sing----" She draws a deep breath at the remembrance of the grand piano in the drawing-room. "It is ever so much bigger than the one at the vicarage, which was always out of tune. I'll get my cousin Joe to send me a list of songs, and we will buy a harmonium, too, Philip. I can play the harmonium splendidly." "I am glad you are pleased, Eleanor," ha replies, kissing her upturned face. "And now, I am going to dress, for I feel horrible after my journey. May I ring for Sarah?" "Of course. What a question! Do exactly as you like with your own servants." She finds Sarah in her room busily unpacking. "Oh! there you are," cries Eleanor. "I forgot I had given you my keys. It is such a blessing to be able to talk in English, that foreign stuff was awful, I could not speak a word! Yes, I will wear my lovely pink tea-gown--did you ever see anything so pretty, Sarah? I must make you put it on some day, just to see how it looks on another person. You are a bit stouter than I am though, but perhaps you could pull in----" And so Eleanor rattles on, just as if Sarah were one of the farm-servants at home, and she the same unaffected light-hearted Miss Grebby. "Do you come from the country, Sarah?" she asks at last. "Yes, ma'am. My father's a grocer, and mother keeps house for the doctor's children in our next village." "Then they don't live together?" "No, ma'am, it's father's temper. We none of us can't live at home, he is that hasty! It ain't safe, ma'am, it ain't really!" "How dreadful," sighs Eleanor. "Doesn't it frighten you?"