Sept. 17, 1892.]

you :

some covers to some extent as a present from a perfect stranger, and especially from a man in his peculiar position. Still, what else could she do? The books were her own; she couldn't refuse them now, merely because he chose to put a Tudor rose upon them all the more as they contained those little marginal notes of 'localities' and 'finds' which even the amateur botanist prizes in his heart above all printed records; and she couldn't bear to ask this grave and dignified young man to take the volumes back, remove the covers on which he had evidently spent so much pains and thought, and replace them by threeand-sixpence worth of plain cloth, unlettered. In the end she was constrained to say frigidly, in a lowered voice: "They're extremely pretty. It was good of you to take so much trouble about an old book like this. There's the money, thank :-and-I'm greatly obliged to you.' The words stuck in her throat. She said them almost necessarily with some little stiffness. And as she spoke, she looked down, and dug her parasol into the gravel of the path for nervousness. But Richard Plantagenet's pride was far deeper than her own. He took the money frankly; that was Mr Wells's; then he answered in that lordly voice he had inherited from his father: 'I'm glad you like the design; it's not quite original: I copied it myself with a few variations from the cover of a book that once belonged to Margaret Tudor. Her initials and yours are the same. But I see you think I oughtn't to have done it. I'm sorry for that: yet I had some excuse. I thought a Plantagenet might venture to take a little more pains than usual over a book for a Tudor. Noblesse oblige.' And as he spoke, standing a yard or two off her, with an air of stately dignity, he lifted his hat, and then moved slowly off down the path to the gate again.

Mary didn't know why, but with one of those impulsive fits which often come over sympathetic women, she ran hastily after him. 'I beg your pardon,' she said, catching him up, and looking into his face with her own as flushed as his. 'I'm afraid I've hurt you. I'm sure I didn't mean to. It was very, very kind of you to design and print that monogram so nicely. I understand your reasons, and I'm immensely obliged. It's a beautiful design: I shall be proud to possess it.'

As for Richard, he dared hardly raise his eyes to meet hers, they were so full of tears. This rebuff was very hard on him. But the tell-tale moisture didn't quite escape Mary. Thank you,' he said simply. 'I-I meant no rudeness; very much the contrary. The coincidence interested me; it made me wish to do the thing for you as well as I could. I'm sorry if I was obtrusive. But-one sometimes forgets-or perhaps remembers. It's good of you to speak so kindly.' And he raised his hat once more, and, walking rapidly off without another word, disappeared down the road in the direction of the High Street.

speak of it. So she told the whole story of the strange young man who had insisted on binding her poor dog-eared old botany-book in such regal fashion. Mrs Tradescant glanced at it and only smiled. 'Oh, my dear, you mustn't mind him,' she said. 'He's one of those crazy Plantagenets. They 're a very queer lot; as mad as hatters. The poor old father's a drunken old wretch, come down in the world, they say: he teaches dancing; but his mania is that he ought by rights to be king of England. He never says so openly, you know he's too cunning for that: but in a covert sort of way, he lays tacit claim to it. The son's a very well conducted young man in his own rank, I believe, but as cracked as the father; and as for the daughter, oh, my dear-such a stuck-up sort of girl, with a feather in her hat, and a bee in her bonnet, who goes out and gives music lessons! It's dreadful, really. She plays the violin rather nicely, I hear; but she's an odious creature. The books? Oh, yes, that's just the sort of thing Dick Plantagenet would love. He's mad on antiquity. If he saw on the title-page your name was Mary Tudor, he'd accept you at once as a remote cousin, and he'd claim acquaintance offhand by a royal monogram. The rose is not bad. But the best thing you can do is to take no further notice of him.'

A little later that very same morning, however, Richard Plantagenet, mad or sane, was speeding away across country-in a parliamentary traintowards Reading and Oxford, decided in his own mind now about two separate plans he had deeply at heart. The first one was, that, for the honour of the Plantagenets, he mustn't fail to get that Scholarship at Durham College: the second was, that, when he came back with it to Chiddingwick, he must make Mary Tudor understand he was at least a gentleman. He was rather less in love with her, to be sure, after this second meeting, than he had been after the first; but still, he liked her immensely, and in spite of her coldness, was somehow attracted towards her; and he couldn't bear to think a mere Welsh Tudor, not even really royal, should feel herself degraded by receiving a gift of a daintily bound book from the hands of the Heir Apparent of the true and only Plantagenets.

CHAPTER V.-GOOD SOCIETY.

Dick knew nothing of Oxford, and would hardly even have guessed where in the town to locate himself while the examination was going on, had not his old head-master at Chiddingwick grammar-school supplied him with the address of a small hotel, much frequented by studious and economical young men on similar errands. Hither, then, he repaired, Gladstone bag in hand, and engaged a modest second-floor room; after which, with much trepidation, he sallied forth at once in his best black suit to call in due form on the Reverend the Dean at Durham College.

loose gray tweed suit and a broad-brimmed slouch-hat of affectedly large and poetical pretensions; the other was a faster-looking and bolder young person, yet more quietly clad in a black cut-away coat and a billycock hat, to which commonplace afternoon costume of the English gentleman he nevertheless managed to give a touch of distinctly rowdy and rapid character. As Dick passed them on the steps, to go forth into the street, the young man in black observed oracularly, 'Lamb ten to the slaughter;' to which his companion answered with brisk good-humour in the self-same dialect, Lamb ten it is; these meadows pullulate: we shall have a full field of them.'

By a burst of inspiration, Dick somehow gathered that they were referring to the field for the Durham Scholarships, and that they knew of ten candidates at least in the place who were also going in for them. He didn't much care for the looks of his two fellow-competitors, for such he judged them to be; but the mere natural loneliness of a sensitive young man in such strange conditions somehow prompted him almost against his will to accost them. I beg your pardon,' he said timidly, in a rather soft voice, but I that is to say-could you either of you tell me which is the nearest way to Durham College?'

The lad in the gray tweed suit laughed and surveyed him from head to foot with a somewhat supercilious glance as he answered with a curious self-assertive swagger: 'You're going to call on the Dean, I suppose. Well, so are we. Durham it is. If you want to know the way, you can come along with us.'

Companionship in misery is dear to the unsophisticated human soul; and Richard, in spite of all his father's lessons in deportment, shrank so profcundly from this initial ordeal of the introductory visit, that he was really grateful to the supercilious youth in the broad-brimmed hat for his condescending offer. Though, to be sure, if it came to that, nobody in England had a right to be either supercilious or condescending to a scion of the Plantagenets.

‘Thank you,' he said, a little nervously. This is my first visit to Oxford, and I don't know my way about. But I suppose you're not in for the Scholarship yourself? And he gazed half unconsciously at his new acquaintance's gray tweed suit and big sombrero, which were certainly somewhat noisy for a formal visit.

The young man in the billycock interpreted the glance aright, and answered it promptly. 'Oh, you don't know my friend,' he said with a twinkle in his eye, and a jerk of the head towards the lad in gray tweed; 'this is Gillingham of Rugby-otherwise known as the Born Poet. England expects every man to do his duty; but she never expects Gillingham to dress or behave like the rest of us poor common everyday mortals. And quite right, too. What's the good of being a Born Poet, I should like to know, if you've got to mind your Ps and Qs just like other people?'

'Well, I'm certainly glad I'm not an Other Person,' Gillingham responded calmly, with a nonchalant air of acknowledged superiority. Other People for the most part are so profoundly uninteresting! But if you're going to walk with

us, let me complete the introduction my friend has begun. This is Faussett of Rugby, otherwise known as the Born Philistine. Congenitally incapable of the faintest tincture of Culture himself, he regards the possession of that alien attribute by others as simply ridiculous.' Gillingham waved his hand vaguely towards the horizon in general. 'Disregard what he says,' he went on, as unworthy a serious person's intelligent consideration, and dismiss him to that limbo where he finds himself most at home, among the rowdy mob of all the Gaths and Askelons!'

་

Dick hardly knew how to comport himself in such unwonted company. Gillingham's manner was unlike anything else to which he had ever been accustomed. But he felt dimly aware that politeness compelled him to give his own name in return for the others'; so he faltered out somewhat feebly, 'My name's Plantagenet,' and then relapsed into a timid silence.

'Whew! How's that for a name?' Gillingham exclaimed, taken aback. Rather high, Tom, isn't it? Are you any relation to the late family, so called, who were kings of England?'

This was a point-blank question which Dick could hardly avoid; but he got over the thin ice warily by answering with a smile: 'I never heard of more than one family of Plantagenets in England.'

'Eton, of course?' Gillingham suggested with a languid look. 'It must be Eton. It was founded by an ancestor.'

no

To Dick himself, the question of the Plantagenet pedigree was too sacred for a jest; but he saw the only way to treat the matter in the present company was by joking; so he answered with a little laugh: I believe there's provision there for the founder's kin, so I didn't benefit by it. I come only from a very small country grammar-school-Chiddingwick, in Surrey.'

'Chiddingwick! Chiddingwick! Never knew there was such a place,' Gillingham put in with crushing emphasis. And he said it with an air which showed at once so insignificant a school was wholly unworthy a Born Poet's attention.

As for the Philistine, he laughed. "Well, which are you going in for?' he asked, with a careless swing of his cane: "The science, or the classics?'

'Neither,' Dick answered. 'My line's modern history.'

With a sudden little start, Gillingham seemed to wake up to interest. So's mine,' he put in, looking extremely wise. 'It's the one subject now taught at our existing universities that a creature with a soul-immortal or otherwise— would be justified in bothering his head about for one moment. Classics and mathematics! oh, fiddlesticks! shade of Shelley, my gorge rises at them!'

'You won't have any chance against Gillingham, though,' Faussett interposed with profound conviction. He's a fearful dab at history! You never knew such a howler. He's read pretty well everything that's ever been written in it from the earliest ages to the present time. Herodotus and York Powell alike at his fingerends! We consider at Rugby that a man's got to get up uncommon early if he wants to take a rise out of Trevor Gillingham.'

Sept. 17, 1892.]

'I'm sorry for that,' Dick answered quite earnestly, astonished, now he stood face to face with these men of the world, at his own presumption in venturing even to try his luck against them. For I can't have many shots at Scholarships myself; and unless I get one, I can't afford to come up at all to the university.' His very pride made him confess this much to his new friends at once, for he didn't wish to seem as if he made their acquaintance under false pretences.

'Oh, for my part, I don't care twopence about the coin,' Gillingham replied with lordly indifference, cocking his hat yet a trifle more onesidedly than ever. 'Only, the commoner's gown, you know, is such an inartistic monstrosity! I couldn't bear to wear it! And if one goes to a college at all, one likes to feel one goes on the very best possible footing, as a member of the foundation, and not as a mere outsider, admitted on sufferance.'

Dick followed him, trembling, into the large paved quad, and up the stone steps of the Dean's staircase, and quivered visibly to Faussett's naked eye as they were all three ushered into the great man's presence. The room was panelled, after Clarence's own heart: severe engravings from early Italian masters alone relieved the monotony of its old wooden wainscots.

A servant announced their names. The Dean, a precise-looking person in most clerical dress, seated at a little oak table all littered with papers, turned listlessly round in his swinging chair to receive them. Mr Gillingham of Rugby,' he said, focussing his eye-glass on the credentials of respectability which the Born Poet presented to him. 'Oh, yes, that's all right. Sixth Form h'm, h'm Your head-master was so kind as to write to me about you. I'm very glad to see you at Durham, I'm sure, Mr Gillingham: hope we may number you among ourselves before long. I've had the pleasure of meeting your father once I think it was at Athens. Or no, the Piræus. Sir Bernard was good enough to use his influence in securing me an escort from the Greek Government for my explorations in Boeotia. Country very much disturbed: soldiers absolutely necessary. These papers are quite satisfactory, of course; h'm, h'm: highly satisfactory. Your Head tells me you write verses, too. Well, well, we shall see. You'll go in for the Newdigate. The Keats of the future!'

'We call him the Born Poet at Rugby, sir,' Faussett put in, somewhat mischievously.

And you're going in for the modern history examination? the Dean said, smiling, but otherwise not heeding the cheeky interruption. Well, history will be flattered.' He readjusted his eyeglass.Mr Faussett; Rugby too, I believe? H'm, h'm; well, your credentials are respectable, decidedly respectable-though by no means brilliant. You've a brother at Christ Church, I understand; ah, yes, exactly. You take up classics. Quite so. And now for you, sir; let me see;' he dropped his eyeglass, and stared hard at the letter Richard laid before him: 'Mr-er-Plantagenet of what is it?-oh, I see, Chiddingwick grammar-school. Chiddingwick, Chiddingwick? H'm? h'm never heard of it. Eh? What's that? In Yorkshire, is it? Oh, ah, in Surrey; exactly; quite so. You're a candidate for the History

Scholarship, it seems. Well, the name Plantagenet's not unknown in history. That'll do, Mr Plantagenet; you can go. Good-morning. Examination begins in hall to-morrow at ten o'clock punctually.-Mr Gillingham, will you and your friend lunch with me on Friday at half-past one?-No engagement? Most fortunate.' And with a glance at the papers still scattered about his desk, he dismissed them silently.

Dick slank down the steps with a more oppressive consciousness of his own utter nothingness in the scheme of things, than he had ever before in his life experienced. He strolled with his two chance acquaintances down the beautiful High Street, and into the gardens at Magdalen, very heavy in heart at their dire predictions. The cloisters themselves failed to bring him comfort. He felt himself foredoomed already to a disastrous fiasco. So many places and things he had only read about in books, this brilliant, easy-going, very grown-up Trevor Gillingham had seen and mixed in and made himself a part of. He had pervaded the Continent. The more Gillingham talked, indeed, the more Dick's heart sank. Why, the man knew well every historical site and building in Britain or out of it! History to him was not an old almanac, but an affair of real life. Paris, Brussels, Rome-Bath, Lincoln, Holyrood-he had known and seen them! Dick longed to go back and hide his own discomfited head once more in the congenial obscurity of dear sleepy old Chiddingwick.

But how could he ever go back without that boasted Scholarship? How cover his defeat after Mr Plantagenet's foolish talk at the White Horse? How face his fellow-townsmen-and Mary Tudor? For very shame's sake, he felt, he must brazen it out now, and do the best he knew-for the honour of the family.

SOME NEW INDIAN INSECT PESTS.

THE progress of scientific research is constantly leading to the discovery of new enemies to mankind. Fortunately, where science finds the bane, it also seeks to discover the antidote, although it is not always immediately successful. What Miss Ormerod is doing for England in her campaign against our insect enemies, Dr Cotes of the Indian Museum in Calcutta is striving to do against the legions of tiny insects in India that devour the valuable products of the earth and make vain the labour of the husbandman. former times the vague name of 'blight' was given to every sort of flying insect or creeping pest that attacked the growing crops. Now, science with its microscope comes forward and examines the specific character of each sort of blight in whatever novel or unpleasant form it has presented itself. The philosopher, in his chamber of experiments, seeks to instruct his fellow-men whence and why the new plague has come, and how it may be mitigated or averted.

In

Every one in England has now become familiar with Indian tea. It is only about forty years ago that the cultivation of the tea-plant for commercial purposes was commenced in India. The enterprising men who established tea-gardens by clearing away the forests and underwood on the hills and by draining malarious swamps, found