NOT sit still, nor hinder themselves from making faces, and playing
tricks; but that was the worst of them--they never told untruths,
never did anything mean or unfair, and could always be made sorry
when they had been in fault. Their old school-mistress liked them in
spite of all the plague they gave her; and they liked her too, though
she had tried upon them every punishment she could devise.

Little Miss Jane, the orphan whom the Colonel and Mrs. Selby had left
to be brought up by her grandmother, had a great fancy that Alfred
should be a page; and as she generally had her own way, he went up to
the Grange when he was about thirteen years old, and put on a suit
thickly sown with buttons. But ere the gloss of his new jacket had
begun to wear off, he had broken four wine-glasses, three cups, and a
decanter, all from not knowing where he was going; he had put sugar
instead of salt into the salt-cellars at the housekeeper's dining-
table, that he might see what she would say; and he had been caught
dressing up Miss Jane's Skye terrier in one of the butler's clean
cravats; so, though Puck, the aforesaid terrier, liked him better
than any other person, Miss Jane not excepted, a regular complaint
went up of him to my Lady, and he was sent home. He was abashed, and
sorry to have vexed mother and disappointed Miss Jane; but somehow he
could not be unhappy when he had Harold to play with him again, and
he could halloo as loud as they pleased, and stamp about in the
garden, instead of being always in mind to walk softly.

There was the pony too! A new arrangement had just been made, that
the Friarswood letters should be fetched from Elbury every morning,
and then left at the various houses of the large straggling district
that depended on that post-office. All letters from thence must be
in the post before five o'clock, at which time they were to be sent