"Well, can I bring it?"

"No, we'll take a non-murderous walk for a change. I'm tired of being shunned by the common objects of the countryside."

"Well, shall I bring Ants, Bees, and Wasps?"

"Certainly not. We don't want to go trailing about Hampshire like two jam sandwiches."

"I mean the book."

"No, if you want to carry something, you can carry my cleek and six golf balls."

"Oh, yes, and then I'll practice bringing eggs down in my mouth from very high trees."

John liked this form of exercise, because at the trifling cost of making one ball intolerably sticky it kept Harold from asking questions; for about two hundred yards he enjoyed this walk more than any he had ever taken with his nephew.

"But birds' nesting time won't come till the spring," Harold sighed.

"No," said John, regretfully: there were many lofty trees round Ambles, and with his mouth full of eggs anything might happen to Harold.

The transference of the vicarage family was at last complete, and John was penitently astonished to find that Laurence really did intend to pay for their board; in fact, the ex-vicar presented him with a check for two months on account calculated at a guinea a week each. John was so much moved by this event—the manner in which Laurence offered the check gave it the character of a testimonial and thereby added to John's sense of obligation—that he was even embarrassed by the notion of accepting it. At the same time a faint echo of his own realistic beginnings tinkled in his ear a warning not to refuse it, both for his own sake and for the sake of his brother-in-law. He therefore escaped from the imputation of avarice by suggesting that the check should be handed to Hilda, who, as housekeeper, would know how to employ it best. John secretly hoped that Hilda, through being able to extract what he thought of as "a little pin money for herself" out of it, might discard the martyr's halo that was at present pinching her brains tightly enough, if one might judge by her constricted expression.

"There will undoubtedly be a small profit," he told himself, "for if Laurence has a rather 

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