How near the end we are getting, and yet so much to come. Never mind. We will tell it all naturally and straightforwardly, and then there will be nothing to offend you.

By-and-by it became necessary that Charles should have air and exercise. His arm was well Every splinter had been taken out of it, and he must lie on the sofa no longer.

So he was driven out through pleasant places, through the budding spriag, in one of Lord Hainault’s carriages. AU the meadows had been bush-harrowed and rolled long ago, and now the orchises and fritillaries were begianing to make the grass look purple. Lady Hainault had a low carriage, and a pair of small cobs, and this was given up to Charles; and Lady Hainault’s first coachman declined to drive her ladyship out in the daytime, for fear that the second coachman (a meritorious young man of forty) should frighten Charles by a reckless and inexperienced way of driving.

Consequently Lady Hainault went a buying flannel petticoats and tliat sort of thing, for the poor people in Casterton and Henley, driven by her second coachman; and Charles was trundled all over the country by the first coachman, in a low carriage with the pair of cobs. But Lady Hainault was as well pleased with the arrangement as the old coachman himself, and so it is no business of ours. For the curious thing was, that no one who ever knew Charles, would have hesitated for an instant in giving up to him, his or her, bed, or dinner, or carriage, or any other thing in this world. For people are great fools, you know.

Perhaps the reason of it was that every one who made Charles’s acquaintance, knew by instinct that he would have cut off his right hand to serve them. I don’t know why it was. But there is the fact.

Sometimes Lady Ascot would go with him, and sometimes William. And one day, when William was with him, they were bowling quietly along a by-road on the opposite side of the water from Hurley. And in a secret place, they came on a wicked old gentleman, breaking the laws of his country, and catching perch in close time, out of a punt, with a chair, and a stone bottle, and a fisherman from Maidenliead, who shall be nameless, but who must consider himself cautioned.

The Eajah of Ahmednuggur lives close by there; nd he was reading the Times, when Charles asked the coachman to pull up, that he might see the sport. The Eajah’s attention was caught by seeing the carriage stop; and he looked through a double-barrelled opera glass, and not only saw Charles and William in the carriage, but saw, through the osiers, the hoary old profligate with his paternoster pulling the perch out as fast as he could put his line in. Fired by a virtuous indignation (I wish every gentleman on the Thames would do likewise), he ran in his breeches and slippers down the lawn, and began blowing up like Old Gooseberry.

The old gentleman who was fishing looked at the rajah’s red-brick house, and said, “If my face was as ugly as that house, I would wear a green veil; “but he ordered the fisherman to take up the rypecks, and he floated away down stream.

And as Charles and William drove along, Charles said, “My dear boy, there could not be any harm in catching a few roach. I should so like to go about among pleasant places in a punt once more.”

When they got home, the head keeper was sent for. Charles told him that he would so much like to go fishing, and that a few roach would not make much difference. The keeper scornfully declined arguing about the matter, but only wanted to know what time

Mr. Ravenshoe would like to go, adding that any one who made objections would be brought up uncommon short.

So William and he went fishing in a punt, and one day Charles said, “I don’t care about this punt-fishing much. I wish — I wish I could get back to the trout at Ravenshoe.”

“Do you really mean that?” said William.

“Ah, Willy!” said Charles. “If I could only see it again!”

“How I have been ............