Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE PEIMROSE ADMINISTRATION. co " 5TLT was in the early summer, when I was @i, between ten and eleven, that I was first left alone for any length of time with Miss Primrose. My father had gone to London on business connected with a lawsuit in which he was engaged as Sir James Wycherley's guardian. He was to be there some time, and would also have to go once or twice, he thought, to Burnham, so that he left the time of his return home quite uncertain. We were not to expect him, he said, till we saw him, and were to forward his letters to his club. "I went with him in the dogcart to the station, the morning he left us—a bright, cool morning, I remember it well, and can almost recall the delicious freshness of the air throughwhich we drove so fast. The exhilarating and present pleasure entirely occupied my childish mind. I forgot how soon it would be past, and I left to face the drear realities of the Primrose administration. So I said good-bye quite cheerfully, and when my father had kissed me and said,' God bless you, little woman! Mind you are a good child, and do what Miss Primrose tells you,' I went so far as to reply with careless confidence, ' Oh, yes, Father, all right; of course I shall;' and having charged him not to forget the present he was to bring me from London, I waved my handkerchief, and saw him off without a pang. But he had not gone away without making every arrangement he could think of for my welfare during his absence, amongst other things leaving instructions with Miss Primrose that I was to ride as usual with Nora Wycherley." " I thought you said she was never allowed to ride," remarked Walter. "No, I said her sisters never had been. I was going to tell you that an exception had been made in her favour a few months beforethe time I ...