Old Kensington

pril when M

roat builds, and

ups the little

Brow

s are now and a fine growth of respectable modern villas. I believe that in those days there were sheep grazing in Kensington Gore. It is certain that Mr. Penfold kept Alderneys in the field beyond his orchard; and that they used to come and drink in a pond near his cottage. He lived with his wife and his daughter, under an old tiled roof, and with a rose-tree growing on the wall. In the window of the cottage a little card was put up, announcing that "Curds-and-whey were to be had within," and the children sometimes went there to drink the compound out of Emma Penfold's doll's tea-things. The old pond was at the garden-gate: there was a hedge round about it, and alder-trees starting up against the sunset, and the lanes, and orchards beyond. The water reflected the sunset in the

nd the little girls crowned with May-flower wreaths. It was hard work settling down to lessons on those days. How slowly the clocks ticked when the practice hour began; how the little birds would come hopping on the window-ledge, before Dolly had half finished her s

house, and put herself to bed and blow out her own candle if Zoe did not come for it. How bare and chill and lonely it was to be all by oneself at the top of that bu

out, and Rhoda's shriek brought up one of John M

tter?' said the you

screamed?' said little Rhoda, di

ll go to her. A little girl of ten years old frightened at a cat! For shame, Rhoda! There

rgan was master of the nest, which his step-mother kept in excellent order and ruled with an active rod. There were two pupils, two younger brothers, two sisters, and Rhoda Parnell, the forlorn little niece they had adopted. Downstairs the fat parlour-maid and the old c

ral and physical rectitude. She allowed John to sit in an arm-chair, but no one else if she could help it. When poor little Rhoda was tired, she used to go up to the ro

writing of twenty years ago) somewhat apart from the big uneasy world surging beyond the turnpike-a world of neighbours bound together by the old winding streets and narrow corners in a community of venerable elm-trees and traditions that are almost levelled away. Mr. Awl, the bootmaker, in High Street, exhibited peculiar walking-shoes long after high-heels and kid brodekins had come into fashion in the metropolis. The last time I was in his shop I saw a pair of the old-fashioned, flat, sandalled shoes, directed to Miss Vieuxtemps, in Palace Green. Tippets, poke-bonnets, even a sedan-chair, still existed among us long after they had been discarded by more active minds. In Dolly's early days, in Kensington Square itself, high-heels and hoops were not unknown; but these belonged to ladies of some pre

onts. They always conversed with their customers while they measured a yard of silk or sold a skein of thread across their counters. Dolly would feel flattered when Mr. Baize found her gro

her son and his pupils at tea-time. 'I think tradespeople are often very sensible and well-informed persons,' said Mrs. Morgan, 'when they do not forget themselves, Mr. Raban. Radical

e to themselves,' said Mr. Ra

upil at that time. 'I daresay Master George wishes they would;

re he is,' cries John, starting up has

nswer. With what emphasis he preached his dull Sunday sermon, with what excitement he would to his admiring sisters and mother read out his impossible articles in the Vestryman's Magazine or elsewhere, how liberally he dashed and italicised his sentences, how gallantly he would fly to his pen or his pulpit in defence of friend or in attack of foe (the former being flesh a

other more than many people do, but they certainly believed in each other more fervently. They had a st

ople's faces, he thought he should see them laughing at him. He was very lazy, as sensitive people often are; he hated games and active amusements; he had a soft melancholy voice that was his one endowment, besides his gift for music; he could work when he chose, but he was beginning life in despair with it, and he was not popular among his companions; they called him conceited, and they were right; but it was a melancholy conceit, if they had but known it. The truth was, however, that he was too ugly, too clever, too clumsy to get on with boys of a simpler and wholesomer mind. Even John Morg

ng the wounds of her poor St. Sebastian, who, when he was a little boy, would come home day after day smarting and bleeding with the arrows of his tormentors. These used to be, alternately, Lady Sarah herself, Cassie Morgan, and Zoe, the two boys when they were at home for t

he did not often find time to come and see them. He used to be tramping off to Putney, where he and his friend Frank Raban kept a boat; or they would be locked up

erly interest in the pupils. She had much to say about young Mr. Raban, whose re

told Rhoda and Dolly one day. 'They cannot do

me late in the evening, tired and hungry and calling out for food. At whatever hour they came old Betty had a meal of cold meat and cake for them, of which George partook with good appetite. At Church House, if George was late for dinner he had to wait for tea and thin bread-and-butter at eight o'clock. Lady Sarah, who had fought many a battle for George's father, now-from some curious retrospective feeling-seemed to feel it her