nothing whatever that looked as if it belonged to one of few years.

For it was hung in faded plum-coloured satin, the eighteenth-century furniture was quaint and beautiful, and the narrow oval mirrors, set in tarnished gilded frames like a frieze about its walls, presented to Brigit's eye as she opened the door an infinite and bewildering number of Tommies, bending studiously over a large sheet of writing-paper, that he held on a book on his knees.

"Hello, Tommy, what are you up to?"

The boy looked up, his face full of ecstasy. "I say, Bick, he will! He will help me learn to be a violinist! He's going to find a good teacher for me, and then, when I have got over the first grind, you know, he's going—oh, Bicky, darling—he's going to teach me himself, at the same time. Isn't he an angel!"

She sat down. "Yes, Tommy. But what on earth are you writing?"

"Well, you see, he—he says I must be educated. I had to promise him to go in for Latin and all that rot. It's—a bore, but he says a musician must be educated——"

She started. And he himself, was he educated? Did he know the ordinary things known, colloquially speaking, by everybody? She did not know. It had never occurred to her before.

"Yes, dear, but—what is that paper?"

Tommy blushed.

"Well, he's so keen on it, you know, I thought I'd advertise for a—a tutor."

"Advertise for a tutor!"

"Yes. There is no good in wasting time, is there? And she would potter about asking people their advice, etc., so I—I have just drawn up this. You won't tell?"

She shook her head with much gravity and then read what he had written:

"Wanted, by the Earl of Kingsmead, a tutor. Oxford man preferred. Must be fond of sport, particularly ratting and cricket."

"Do you think it's all right?" he asked, as he read it.

"Y—yes—only there isn't any 'k' in 'particularly.' But I think we'd better—ask someone, little 

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