At _his_ age, no doubt, he does not care much for the foolish endearments of lovers; so, with an easy conscience, I devote myself, for my short space, to the boys, to Barbara, to Vick, and the jackdaw.

Once, indeed--just once--I have a little talk with him, and afterward I almost wish that I had not had it.

We are sitting under a horse-chestnut-tree in the garden--a tree that, under the handling of the warm air, is breaking into a thousand tender faces.

We did not begin by being _tete-a-tete_; indeed, several lately-occupied chairs intervene between us, but first one and then another has slipped away, and we are alone.
"Nancy!" says Sir Roger, his eyes following the Brat, who is lightly tripping up the stone steps, looking very small and agile in his white-flannel cricketing things, "what is that boy's real name?
Why do you call him 'the Brat' ?" "Because he _is_ such a _Brat_," reply I, fondly, picking up from the grass a green chestnut-bud that the squirrels or the rooks have untimely nipped.

"Did you ever see any thing so little, so white and pert?
He has sadly mistaken his vocation in life: he ought to have been a street Arab." "One gets rather sick of one's surname," says my companion.