The Ship of Stars

t to Tredinnis House. They began the very next day in the library at Tredinnis-a deserted room carpeted with badgers' skins, and lined w

raught under the door puffed little drifts of hair over the polished boards. Then he settled down to the first

otes in the margin or on long slips of paper, while the children learnt. A se

Honoria. "How am I to get the

th a beam across. B is a cat with his tail curled under him-watch me drawing it. C is an old woman stooping; and D is another cat, only his back is

o on. You must

day night. One was a good cat, and kept his comb properly-like E

as a fulmart,"

he was not going to confess it. So he went on hurried

y, for the ship was a Ship of Stars-you make X's for stars; but that's a witch-ship; so it stuck fast in Y, whic

he ending at all," sa

of St

you ever

N

ere's a sto

me abo

stories afterwards; a

iday and The Girl

Ship of

f the stories that won't come-and they're the love

east. All she said was, "what funny words you use!" She went

er animal with uncommon tricks. This dashed Taffy a bit, for he liked to be thought a fine fellow. But he went on telling his stories, and sometimes invented new ones for her. George Vyell was much more appreciative. Sir Harry had heard of the lessons, and wrote to beg that his son might join the class. So George rode over three times a week to learn Latin, which he did with uncommon slowness. But he thought Taffy's stories st

After lessons he and Taffy had a try with them, in a clearing behind the shrubberie

"you'll never learn if you hit so wild as that. You

aight in the face, for his own eyes were full of tears of excitement. At the end of the bout, when George said, "Now we must shake han

at twelve o'clock; by one o'clock Taffy had to be home for dinner. Loneliness filled the afternoons, but the child peopled them with extravagant fancies. He and George were crusaders sworn to defend the Holy Sepulchre, and bound by an oath of brotherhood, though George was a Red Cross Knight and he a plain squire; and after the most surprising adventures Taffy received the barbed and poisoned arrow intended for his master, and died most impressively,

ury. That was his plain of Troy, his Field of Cressy, his lists of Ashby de la Zouche. The high road at the back of the towans crossed a stream, by a ford and a footbridge; and the travelli

a walk when the horn was blown, and he and Taffy went to meet the post together. There were three or four letters which the Vicar ope

s won the

h Aeneid for some weeks, and bo

Oxford?"

It came on him suddenly that this child, whom he l

ered; and added, "the most

r go there?"

listened too, bending over her guipure. The love with which he looked back to Oxford was the second passion of Samuel Raymond's life; and Humility was proud of it, not jealous at all. He forgot all the struggle, all

l I go th

p quickly, and met

d. Mr. Raymond stared at the em

ieced together of odds and ends from picture-books, and peopled with all the old heroes. And so,

s with him, and he ached for companionship. Of that ache was born his half-crazy adoration of George Vyell. There were hours when he lay in some nook of the towans, peering into the ground, seeing pictures i

house winking away in the north-east. George lived so

r guessed. It might have surprised that very careless young gentleman, when he looked up from his v