artifices, to gain the free entree of the nursery. In this nursery were growing up some five or six younger branches of the Rutland family. After a certain hour in the day none of the elders ever thought of invading its remote precincts. Five o'clock in the evening was the children's tea hour, and the plensantest, I thought, in the twenty-four. Nurse was a staid woman, who knew liow to appreciate a