anxiously at him, and with a kind of smile the word 'Apres' passed between them. The Sunday custom was for Clement to take Adrian to say his Catechism, and have a little instruction before going out walking, but as this could not be on this day, Anna and he were to go out for a longer walk than usual, so as to remove disturbance from the household. Gerald declined, of course, and was left extended on the sofa; but just as Anna and Adrian had made a few steps along the street, and the boy had prevailed not to walk to Clipstone, as she wished, but to go to the cliffs, that she might hear the adventure related in sight of the scene of action, he discovered that he had left a glove. He was very particular about Sunday walking in gloves in any public place, and rushed back to find it, leaving his sister waiting. Presently he came tearing back and laughing.
'Did you find it?'
'Oh yes; it was in the drawing-room. And what else do you think I found? Why, Cherie administering'-and he pointed down his throat, and made a gulp with a wild grimace of triumph. 'On the sly! Ha! ha!'
Anna felt as if the ground had opened under her feet, but she answered gravely-
'Poor Gerald went through a great deal yesterday, and is quite knocked up, so no wonder he needs some strengthening medicine.'
'Strengthening grandmother! Don't you think I know better than that?' he cried, with a caper and a grin.
'Of course you had to have some cordial when you were taken out of the water.'
'And don't you know what it was?'
'I know the fisher-people carry stuff about with them in case of accidents.'
'That's the way with girls-just to think one knows nothing at all.'
'What do you know, Adrian?'
'Know? Why, I haven't been about with Kit and Ted Harewood for nothing! Jolly good larks it is to see how all of you take for granted that a fellow never knew the taste of anything but tea and milk-and-water.'
'But what do you know the taste of?' she asked, with an earnestness that provoked the boy to tease and put on a boasting manner, so that she could not tell how much he was pretending for the sake of amazing and tormenting her, in which he certainly succeeded.
However, his attention was diverted by coming round the corner to where there was a view of Anscombe Bay, when he immediately began to fight his battles o'er again, and show where they had been groping in the mud and seaweed in pursuit of sea-urchins, and stranded star- fish, and crabs.
'And it wasn't a forest after all, it was just a sell-nothing but mud and weed, only Fergus would go and poke in it, and there were horrid great rough stones and rocks too, and I tumbled over one.'
Anna here became conscious that the whole place was the resort of the afternoon promenaders of Rockquay, great and small, of all ranks and degrees, belonging to the 'middle class' or below it, and that they might themselves become the object of attention; and she begged her brother to turn back and wait till they could have the place to themselves.
'These are a disgusting lot of cads,' he agreed, 'but there won't be such a jolly tide another time. I declare I see the very rock where I saw the sea-mouse-out there! red and shiny at the top.'
Here a well-dressed man, who had just come up the Coast-guard path, put aside his pipe, and taking off his hat, deferentially asked-
'Have I the honour of addressing Sir Adrian Vanderkist?'
Adrian replied with a gracious nod and gesture towards his straw hat, and in another moment Anna found him answering questions, and giving his own account of the adventure to the inquirer, who, she had little doubt, was a reporter, and carrying his head, if possible, higher in consequence as he told how Fergus Merrifield had lingered over his stones, and all the rest after his own version. She did not hear the whole, having had to answer the inquiries of one of the bicycle friends of the previous day, but when her attention was free she heard-
'And the young lady, Sir Adrian?'
'Young lady! Thank goodness, we were not bothered with any of that sort.'
'Indeed, Sir Adrian, I understood that there was a young lady, Miss Aurelia, that Master Merrifield was lamenting, as if she had met with a watery grave.'
'Ha! ha! Aralia was only the name of a bit of fossil kind of a stick that Merrifield had us down there to find in the fossil forest. I'm sure I saw no forest, only bits of mud and stuff! But he found a bit, sure enough, and was ready to break his heart when he had to leave his bag behind him on the rock. Aralia a young lady! That's a good one.'
He forgathered with a school-fellow on the way home, and Anna heard little more.
The next day, however, there arrived the daily local paper, addressed to Sir Adrian Vanderkist, Bart., and it was opened by him at breakfast-time.
'I say! Look here! 'Dangerous Accident in Anscombe. A Youthful Baronet in peril!' What asses people are!' he added, with an odd access of the gratified shame of seeing himself for the first time in print. But he did not proceed to read aloud; there evidently was something he did not like, and he was very near pocketing it and rushing off headlong to school with it, if his aunt and Anna had not entreated or commanded for it, when he threw it over with an uncomplimentary epithet.
'Just what I was afraid of when I saw the man talking to him!' exclaimed Anna. 'Oh, listen!
''The young Sir Adrian Vanderkist, at present residing at St. Andrew's Rock with his aunt, Mrs. Grinstead, and the Rev. E. C. Underwood, and who is a pupil at Mrs. Edgar's academy for young gentlemen, was, we are informed, involved in the most imminent danger, together with a son of General Sir Jasper Merrifield, K.G.C., a young gentleman whose remarkable scientific talent and taste appear to have occasioned the peril of the youthful party, from whence they were rescued by Gerald F. Underwood, Esq., of Vale Leston.''
'What's all that?' said Gerald F. Underwood, Esquire, sauntering in and kissing his aunt. 'Good-morning. How is Uncle Clement this morning?'
'Much better; I think he will be up by and by,' answered Mrs. Grinstead.
'What bosh have you got there? The reporters seized on their prey, eh?'
'There's Sir Jasper!' exclaimed Anna, who could see through the blinds from where she sat.
Sir Jasper had driven over with his little son, and, after leaving him at school, had come to inquire for Mr. Underwood, and to obtain a fuller account of the accident, having already picked up a paper and glanced at it.
'I am afraid my little scamp led them into the danger,' he said. 'Scientific taste forsooth! Science is as good a reason as anything else for getting into scrapes.'
'Really,' said Gerald, 'I can't say I think your boy came out the worst in it, though I must own the Rockquay Advertiser bestows most of the honours of the affair on the youthful baronet! You say he blew his own trumpet,' added Gerald, turning to Anna.
'The reporter came and beset us,' said Anna, in a displeased voice. 'I did not hear all that passed, but of course Adrian told him what he told me, only those people make things sound ridiculous.'
'To begin with,' said Gerald, 'I don't think Fergus, or at any rate Davy Blake, was in fault. They tried to go home in good time, having an instinct for tides, but Adrian was chasing a sea-mouse or some such game, and could not be brought back, and then he fell over a slippery rock, and had to be dragged out of a hole, and by that time the channel of the Anscombe stream was too deep, at least for him, who has been only too carefully guarded from being amphibious.'
'Oh! that did not transpire at home,' said Sir Jasper. 'Boys are so reserved.'
Mrs. Grinstead and Anna looked rather surprised. Anna even ventured-
'I thought Fergus got too absorbed.'
'So did I,' said his father dryly. 'And he did not justify himself.'
'M-m-m,' went on Gerald, skimming the article.
'Read it,' cried Anna. 'You know none of us have seen it.'
Gerald continued-
''Their perilous position having been observed from Anscombe cliffs, Mr. G. F. Underwood of Vale Leston heroically' (i.e. humbugically) 'made his way out to their assistance, while a boat was put off by the Coast-guard, and that of Mr. Carter, fisherman, from Rockquay was launched somewhat later.' We could not see either of them, you know. My eye, this is coming it strong! 'The young baronet generously insisted that the little fisher-boy, David Blake, who had accompanied them, should first be placed in safety-''
'Didn't he?' exclaimed Anna. 'I saw, and I wondered, but I thought it was his doing.'
'You saw?'
