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Charlie Gerard

Practical Machine Learning in

JavaScript
TensorFlow.js for Web Developers
1st ed.
Charlie Gerard
Les Clayes sous bois, France

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the

author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s
product page, located at www.​apress.​com/​978-1-4842-6417-1. For
more detailed information, please visit http://​www.​apress.​com/​
source-code.

ISBN 978-1-4842-6417-1 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-6418-8

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6418-8

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© Charlie Gerard 2021

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To Joel, Jack and Daisy, just because. To me, for pushing through a very
tough year and still doing my best writing this book.
Introduction
Even though machine learning (ML) isn’t a new technology,
improvements in techniques and algorithms over the past few years
have brought it to the forefront of technology, making it possibly one of
the most exciting and promising tool to solve complex problems.
In general, most production machine learning applications are
developed using programming languages such as Python or R, by
researchers, machine learning engineers and data scientist; however, in
recent years, new tools have been built in the aim to make machine
learning more accessible to a wider range of developers.
In this book, we will focus on TensorFlow.js, a multi-features
JavaScript library developed by Google that empowers web developers
to build ML-enabled applications in the browser or in Node.js.
You might be thinking: “Why would I read a book about machine
learning in JavaScript if most ML-enabled applications use Python or R
in production?”, or, “Why would I learn about machine learning if I am a
web developer?”. These questions are valid, especially considering that
machine learning is a very different discipline than web development.
However, in the technology field, a part of our work is to keep up to
date with what is going on, not necessarily becoming an expert at every
new technology or tool, but at least have an idea of the possibilities and
limits. In my opinion, this is why tools like TensorFlow.js are important.
Having the possibility to explore a new topic without having to also
learn another programming language breaks down the barrier
considerably. Besides, considering how fast things are moving and how
powerful these tools are 13 becoming, we can imagine a future where
“JavaScript machine learning engineer” would be a sought-after job
title. After all, I would have never imagined “Futurist” would be one.
All this to say that the aim of this book is to introduce machine
learning in a more approachable way, to break down barriers and
hopefully make you feel more comfortable with this technology. After
reading, you should have a good understanding of the current features
offered by machine learning frameworks in JavaScript. To do this, we’ll
define some of the commonly used terms and concepts you will open
come across, we’ll cover the basics of ML using TensorFlow.js, and we’ll
build a variety of projects to understand what is currently possible as
well as some of the pitfalls. By the end, you should be able to, not only
understand the theory, but also build machine learning enabled web
applications.
An important thing to note however, is that this book is not going to
look into how different machine learning algorithms are being
developed. We’re not going to dive into their source code, but instead,
learn to identify their use cases and how to implement them. This book
is aimed at being an introduction for people who want to learn more
about machine learning in a practical way, without getting too deep into
advanced topics.
Finally, and more importantly, I wanted to make this book as
engaging as possible, so the different projects you will build involve
various inputs such as images, the video from your webcam feed, the
audio from your computer’s microphone, text data you can replace, and
even motion data!
Machine learning can be fun so, if this sounds interesting to you, I
hope you’ll like this book.
Acknowledgments
First of all, thanks to everyone involved in the creation of this book,
including my publisher, my editor and my technical reviewers, for
giving me this opportunity. Additionally, thanks to the TensorFlow.js
team for creating the framework this book relies on. Their work and
dedication to make machine learning more accessible to web
developers has been essential to my research and work over the past
couple of years. Finally, special thanks to my close friends for their
constant support throughout the years and to the community of people
who have been following my work and sharing my passion for creating
useless (but not worthless) projects. This would not have been possible
without you and I am forever grateful.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:​The basics of machine learning
1.​1 What is machine learning?​
1.​2 Types of machine learning
1.​2.​1 Supervised learning
1.​2.​2 Unsupervised learning
1.​2.​3 Reinforcement learning
1.​2.​4 Semi-supervised learning
1.​3 Algorithms
1.​3.​1 Naive Bayes
1.​3.​2 K-nearest neighbors
1.​3.​3 Convolutional neural networks
1.​4 Applications
1.​4.​1 Healthcare
1.​4.​2 Home automation
1.​4.​3 Social good
1.​4.​4 Art
1.​5 Summary
Chapter 2:​TensorFlow.​js
2.​1 Basics of TensorFlow.​js
2.​1.​1 Creating tensors
2.​1.​2 Accessing data in tensors
2.​1.​3 Operations on tensors
2.​1.​4 Memory
2.​2 Features
2.​2.​1 Using a pre-trained model
 2.​2.​2 Transfer learning
2.​2.​3 Creating, training, and predicting
Chapter 3:​Building an image classifier
3.​1 Using a pre-trained model
3.​2 Transfer learning
Chapter 4:​Text classification and sentiment analysis
4.​1 What is sentiment analysis?​
4.​2 How does natural language processing work?​
4.​2.​1 Common concepts – Basics of NLP
4.​3 Implementing sentiment analysis in TensorFlow.​js
4.​3.​1 Positive, negative, and neutral
4.​3.​2 Toxicity Classifier
4.​4 Applications
4.​4.​1 Cognitive assistants and computer therapy
4.​4.​2 Social media monitoring
4.​4.​3 Automation tools
4.​5 Other types of text classification tools
4.​5.​1 Intent analysis
4.​5.​2 Named Entity Recognition
4.​5.​3 Text summarization
4.​5.​4 Question Answering with TensorFlow.​js
Chapter 5:​Experimenting with inputs
5.​1 Audio data
5.​1.​1 What is sound?​
5.​1.​2 Accessing audio data
5.​1.​3 Visualizing audio data
 5.​1.​4 Training the classifier
5.​1.​5 Predictions
5.​1.​6 Transfer learning API
5.​1.​7 Applications
5.​1.​8 Limits
5.​2 Body and movement tracking
5.​2.​1 Facemesh
5.​2.​2 Handpose
5.​2.​3 PoseNet
5.​3 Hardware data
5.​3.​1 Web Sensors API
5.​3.​2 Accessing sensors data
5.​3.​3 Setting up web sockets
5.​3.​4 Data processing
5.​3.​5 Creating and training the model
5.​3.​6 Live predictions
Chapter 6:​Machine learning in production
6.​1 Challenges
6.​1.​1 Scalability
6.​1.​2 High availability
6.​1.​3 Observability
6.​1.​4 Reusability
6.​2 Machine learning life cycle
6.​3 Machine learning systems
6.​4 Tools
6.​4.​1 Pre-trained models
 6.​4.​2 APIs
6.​4.​3 Serving platforms
Chapter 7:​Bias in machine learning
7.​1 What is bias?​
7.​2 Examples of bias in machine learning
7.​2.​1 Gender bias
7.​2.​2 Racial bias
7.​3 Potential solutions
7.​3.​1 Framing the problem
7.​3.​2 Collecting the data
7.​3.​3 Data preparation
7.​3.​4 Team diversity
7.​4 Challenges
Index
About the Author
Charlie Gerard
is a senior front-end developer at Netlify, a Google Developer Expert in
Web Technologies, and a Mozilla Tech Speaker. She is passionate about
exploring the possibilities of the Web and spends her personal time
building interactive prototypes using hardware, creative coding, and
machine learning. She has been diving into ML in JavaScript for over a
year and built a variety of projects. She’s excited to share what she’s
learned and help more developers get started.
About the Technical Reviewer
David Pazmino
has been developing software applications for 20 years in Fortune 100
companies. He is an experienced developer in front-end and back-end
development who specializes in developing machine learning models
for financial applications. David has developed many applications in
Node.js, Angular.js, and React.js. He currently develops applications in
Scala and Python for deep learning neural networks using TensorFlow
2.0. David has a degree from Cornell University, a master’s from Pace
University in Computer Science, and a master’s from Northwestern in
Predictive Analytics.
© Charlie Gerard 2021
C. Gerard, Practical Machine Learning in JavaScript
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6418-8_1

1. The basics of machine learning

Charlie Gerard1
(1) Les Clayes sous bois, France

1.1 What is machine learning?

Over the past few years, you’ve probably heard the words “machine
learning” many times, but what is it exactly? Is it the same thing as
artificial intelligence? What about deep learning? Neural networks?
Models?
Before diving deeper into the tools, algorithms, and what can be
built, let’s start by defining some of these terms to gain a common
understanding of what machine learning is and is not.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning are all
related terms. However, they’re not exactly the same thing, they’re
more like subsets of each other.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 In the silence that followed it is possible that there recurred to
the minds of both an incident not wholly without bearing on their
future intercourse. One Sabbath evening, shortly after he had gone
to live with Miss Esperance at Remote, she asked him to "engage in
prayer" at family worship—the "family" consisting of herself and
Elsa.
Mr. Wycherly complied readily enough, for he knew plenty of
prayers: but when he prayed, he prayed for "the bishops and curates
and all congregations committed to their charge"; he prayed for the
"good estate of the Catholic Church here upon earth"; and, worst of
all—it being the collect for the day—he prayed that "as thy Holy
Angels always do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment
they may succour and defend us on earth." Never was such a
scandal in a strictly Presbyterian household. Elsa proclaimed
throughout the village that Miss Esperance had been induced to
harbour an undoubted Puseyite, and it would not have surprised her
in the least if he had prayed for the Pope himself.
And Miss Esperance, knowing the length and strength of Elsa's
tongue, felt herself constrained to explain (she did it with
considerable humour) to the Reverend Peter Gloag what had really
happened. Whereupon the minister dismissed Mr. Wycherly and all
his works as being "fettered by formula?": and to the great relief of
this prisoner in the chains of ecclesiasticism he was never again
asked to conduct family worship. He innocently wondered why, for
he imagined with some complacency that he had acquitted himself
gracefully in what had been rather a trying ordeal.
The tender smile of Miss Esperance, as she reflected upon her
many mercies, had changed to a smile of no less tender amusement
as she recalled those by-gone days, and Mr. Wycherly, ever quick to
notice any change in the dear old face he loved so well, felt that he
might now venture upon more familiar ground.
"You look amused," he remarked; "would it be a safe conjecture
to say that you are probably thinking of Edmund?"
"That reminds me," Miss Esperance exclaimed, without
committing herself. "I do wish that we could induce that dear little
boy not to call you 'man.' It is so disrespectful."
It had never struck Mr. Wycherly in that light. In fact he had
found considerable secret comfort in the fact that Edmund, at all
events, had from the very first considered him deserving of that
epithet. Mr. Wycherly was sensitive, and he knew perfectly well in
what sort of estimation most of the inhabitants of Burnhead held
him.
"Do you think it matters?" he asked mildly, "what such a baby
calls me?"
"Not to you, certainly," Miss Esperance replied promptly; "but I
do think it matters for him. He is three now, and it's time he knew
better."
"Surely three is not a very great age?" Mr. Wycherly pleaded.
"It is old enough for Edmund to want his own way, and
generally to take it," Miss Esperance rejoined as she rose from the
table; "and it is old enough for him to learn that he must be dutiful
and obedient."
As Mr. Wycherly held the door open for her to go out, he
remarked deferentially, "But, don't you think, dear Miss Esperance,
that either 'Mr.' or 'Sir' is a somewhat formal mode of address to
exact from such a baby?"
 "I called my honoured father 'Sir' from the time I could speak at
all, and when I was young it would never for one moment have been
permitted to us to address any grown-up person otherwise than with
respect," Miss Esperance continued, as she paused in the doorway.
"I will see what I can do about it this very day. I feel sure that if we
reason with that dear child, we can induce him to find some more
suitable way of addressing you."
When Miss Esperance had gone, and Mr. Wycherly had shut his
door, he shook his head and laughed. Two or three times lately he
had tried a fall with Edmund, and that lusty infant invariably came
off an easy victor.
It was the daily custom for both the little boys to visit Mr.
Wycherly for a few minutes after breakfast, when biscuits were
doled out and there was much cheery good-fellowship. Mr. Wycherly
himself made periodical visits to Edinburgh to purchase these
biscuits, which were adorned with pink and white sugar, and were of
a delectable flavour. Once the biscuits were consumed—they had
three each—Montagu settled down to his lessons, and Edmund, ever
unwillingly, departed with Robina.
Through the open window that morning there floated an
imperative baby voice. "See man," it insisted, "me go and see man."
Mr. Wycherly looked out and Edmund looked up. He stretched
out his fat arms, balancing himself first on one foot and then on the
other, as though poised for flight, while in the thrush-like tones that
were always irresistible to Mr. Wycherly he gave his usual cry of
"Uppie! Uppie! deah man."
When Edmund called him "deah man" there was nothing on
earth that Mr. Wycherly could withhold. "Bring Edmund up,
Montagu," he said, leaning out of the window. "We'll have a holiday
to-day, it's a kind of birthday. Just a year since you came."
But the gentle voice of Miss Esperance interposed. "Edmund
must say 'Please, Mr. Wycherly,' or 'please, sir,' then he can go up."
"See man, me go and see man," Edmund persisted, absolutely
ignoring his aunt's admonition and jumping up and down as though
he could reach Mr. Wycherly that way.
"No, Edmund," Miss Esperance said firmly; "you must say,
'Please, Mr. Wycherly."
Edmund looked at his aunt and his round chubby face
expressed the utmost defiance. "I sall say man, and I will go to
man," he announced loudly and distinctly, "he's my man, and I 'ove
him—I don't 'ove you," he added emphatically.
"Edmund, my son, come here." There was no resisting the
resolution in that very gentle voice. Miss Esperance seated herself on
the garden seat under Mr. Wycherly's window, and Edmund came at
her bidding, to stand in front of her, square and sturdy and
rebellious.
Mr. Wycherly had withdrawn from the window when Miss
Esperance first began her expostulation with Edmund. Now it struck
him as rather shabby to leave her to wrestle with that young sinner
alone over a matter which certainly referred to himself; so he
hastened downstairs and joined her in the garden.
On his appearance Edmund began his dance again, and his
petition of "Uppie! Uppie!"
Mr. Wycherly went and sat on the seat beside Miss Esperance,
trying hard to look stern and judicial, and failing signally, while the
chubby culprit made ineffectual attempts to climb upon his knee.
 "Edmund must say 'Please, Mr. Wycherly,' or 'Please, sir,'" Miss
Esperance repeated.
"Peese, Mittah Chahley," echoed Edmund in tones that would
have melted a heart of stone.
Now if "man" was a disrespectful and familiar mode of address,
"Chahlee" seemed a singularly inappropriate pseudonym for Mr.
Wycherly.
Even Montagu giggled.
The matutinal service of biscuits was long overdue, Edmund
grew impatient, and the corners of his rosy mouth drooped. "I've
said 'Chahley,'" he announced reproachfully, "and you don't take
me."
Mr. Wycherly looked beseechingly at Miss Esperance. "I think he
has done his best," he said in deprecating tones, "it is a difficult
name for a baby."
"Chahlee! Chahlee!" chirped Edmund, beginning to dance again.
"Uppie! Uppie!" then turning to his aunt—"I've said 'im."
"You haven't said it right—but perhaps—" Miss Esperance
wavered.
Edmund marched up to his aunt, placed both his dimpled
elbows on her knees, and gazing earnestly into her face with
bunches of unshed tears still hanging on his lashes, remarked
vindictively: "I wis a gate bid ball would come and bounce at you."
Miss Esperance burst out laughing and stooped to kiss the red,
indignant baby-face. "All the same, my dear son, you must learn to
do what you are told."
"Me go wiv—Chahlee," Edmund announced triumphantly, as Mr.
Wycherly lifted him up.
 "Am I to call you Charlie, too?" asked Montagu, who was rather
jealous where his tutor's favour was concerned.
"Pray, don't!" exclaimed that gentleman hastily.
"Chahlee, Chahlee," crowed Edmund from the safe vantage
ground of Mr. Wycherly's arms as he was carried upstairs. "Deah
man, Chahlee."
Miss Esperance sat on where she was. Her interference had
certainly not improved matters, and she was really perturbed. That
she should in any way, however inadvertently and innocently, have
rendered Mr. Wycherly in the smallest degree ridiculous was most
distressing to her.
Had the baby done his best, or was it but one more instance of
his supreme subtlety in the avoidance of doing what he was told?
Miss Esperance adored Edmund. He was a Bethune from the top
curl of his fair hair to his small, straight, pink toes. Handsome,
ruddy, with very blue eyes; eyes that changed in colour with his
every emotion, even as the sea so many of his forbears had served
changes with the passing hours; he was the image of Archie
Bethune, his father. He was like her brother, whose name he bore,
and still stronger was his likeness to the admiral, her father, that
generous and choleric sailor whose memory she so revered.
Yet no one knew better than Miss Esperance the faults of the
Bethune temperament. Had she not suffered from them herself in
the past? And she was painfully anxious to keep in check the wilful
impulsiveness so strongly marked in her great-nephew—that taking
of their own way, no matter at what cost in tribulation to themselves
or suffering to others. How many Bethunes had it ruined in the past!
And yet if she rebuked him now it might confuse the baby: and
above all, Miss Esperance desired to be just in her dealings with
these small creatures committed to her charge.
As she sat in the sunshine, with the children's voices borne to
her on the soft winds of early summer, she prayed for guidance.
Suddenly the children's voices ceased, for Mr. Wycherly was
reading aloud. It was his habit to read to them odd scraps of
anything that had happened to please himself, while they munched
their biscuits. Sometimes they, or at all events Montagu, understood;
as often they did not: but both found some sort of pleasure in the
fine English gracefully read. Miss Esperance listened, and as if in
answer to her prayer she heard, in Mr. Wycherly's gentle, cultivated
tones, these words: "Love is fitter than fear, gentleness better than
beating, to bring up a child rightly in learning."
So for a while Baby Edmund was allowed to call Mr. Wycherly
very much what he pleased. He occasionally conceded something to
convention by addressing him as "Mittah man" or "Mittah Chahlee"—
but as a rule he took his own way; finally adopting for Mr. Wycherly
Elsa's usual style of address toward himself, namely, "Dearie."
It had never occurred to Mr. Wycherly as possible that anyone
should address him as "Dearie," and this particular term of
endearment did sound somewhat of an anachronism.
But he liked it, he liked it amazingly: and seeing this, Miss
Esperance interfered no more.
In the end, however, it was Montagu who found a pet name for
Mr. Wycherly. "What are you to me?" the little boy asked one day.
"Are you an uncle?"
"No," said Mr. Wycherly, "I am your guardian."
"What's a guardian?"
 "Someone who takes care of a child who has lost his parents."
"May I call you guardian?"
"Certainly, if you wish it."
"May Edmund?"
"Assuredly."
"Then we will—it's more friendlier than 'Mr.,' don't you think?"
And it ended in Guardian being abbreviated into 'Guardie,' so
that Mr. Wycherly was, after all, the only member of the household
who was permitted a diminutive.

CHAPTER IX
CUPID ABROAD

"Cupid abroad was lated in the night,

His wings were wet with ranging in the rain;
Harbour he sought, to me he took his flight,
To dry his plumes," I heard the boy complain;
"I ope'd the door, and granted his desire.
I rose myself, and made the wag a fire."

Everyone in the neighbourhood of Burnhead called Lady Alicia's

youngest daughter "Bonnie Margaret," so full of charm and gaiety
and gentleness was she. Not all the year was Lady Alicia at the "big
hoose": since the death of her husband—worthy David Carruthers,
late Advocate—she always wintered in Edinburgh; but with May,
Bonnie Margaret came back to Burnhead, unless, indeed, as had
happened lately, she spent that month in London with one of her
married sisters. But at all events some part of the summer saw her
back at Burnhead, and the sun seemed to shine the brighter for her
coming.
Like everyone else, she was very fond of Miss Esperance, and
she often came to Remote to play with the little boys who whole-
heartedly approved of her. Mr. Wycherly, too, was fond of Bonnie
Margaret, and somehow, recently, she had seemed to come across
him very often during his walks with Montagu. She would join them,
and sometimes spend a whole long afternoon in the little copse
sitting beside Mr. Wycherly at the foot of his favourite tree, while
Montagu played at the brook.
Very shyly and with many most becoming blushes, Margaret
confided to Mr. Wycherly that she had met a nephew of his during
her visits to her sister. Mr. Wycherly was not in the least interested in
his nephew, but he was interested in anything Bonnie Margaret
chose to talk about, and the nephew acquired a fictitious importance
for this reason.
This nephew was, Margaret carefully explained, an exceedingly
clever young man, who had taken a good degree—but he didn't
want to take orders, and he hated school-mastering—he had tried it
—and now he had gone into a friend's business as a wine merchant,
and his people were very much annoyed. What was Mr. Wycherly's
opinion on the subject? And didn't he think it was very noble of this
young man to earn his bread in this particular fashion? It had taken
many meetings and much elaborate and roundabout explanation
upon Margaret's part before this final statement of the situation was
reached; and Mr. Wycherly, having in the meantime heard
complaints that Bonnie Margaret was very ill to please in the matter
of a husband, began to put two and two together. Many swains had
sighed at Margaret's shrine, and she had received what her mother
called "several quite good offers," but she would have nothing to say
to any of them. She was in character fully as decided as Lady Alicia
herself. But she was demure and gentle in manner, and instead of
fighting for her own way, as is the custom of the strenuous, simply
took it quietly, and without vehement declaration of any kind.
When appealed to as to his opinion of the nobility of his
nephew's conduct in thus plunging into trade, Margaret and Mr.
Wycherly were sitting on a low wall, watching Edmund and Mause
and Montagu disport themselves in the hay-field it bordered.
The summer sun was warm, and Margaret wore a floppy
leghorn hat which threw a most becoming shade over her serious
grey eyes; eyes with long black lashes in somewhat startling
contrast to her very fair hair. Mr. Wycherly particularly admired her
Greek profile, her short upper lip, the lovely oval of her cheek and
chin. Still more did he appreciate her sweet consideration and
gentleness; and for the first time since he came to live in Scotland
he found himself wishing that he knew something of this nephew
who so plainly occupied a prominent position in the thoughts of this
kind and beautiful girl.
"Of course," Mr. Wycherly remarked guardedly, "he is perfectly
right to earn his own living in the way that seems best to him,
though whether it was absolutely necessary to run counter to the
prejudices of his relatives in order to do so is not quite clear."
 "But you would not, would you, look down on anyone just
because he happened to be in trade? If he is a cultured gentleman
already, his being in trade can't make him less of a cultured
gentleman, can it?"
"Of course not," Mr. Wycherly agreed, "but I think I can
understand, perhaps, some slight reason for annoyance on the part
of his people. You see, had he announced earlier this extreme desire
to go into business, it is hardly likely that they would have given him
an expensive education at the University. He was, you tell me, five
years at Oxford?"
"He didn't waste his time there," Margaret answered eagerly,
"he took all sorts of honours: but he loathes teaching—" Margaret
stopped, for Mr. Wycherly was looking at her with a curiously
amused expression which seemed to say, "How is it that you are so
remarkably conversant with the likes and dislikes of this young
man?"
She leant over the wall to gather some of the big horse gowans
that grew in the field, so that her face was hidden from Mr.
Wycherly. She fastened a little bunch of them into her waistband;
then she said in the detached tone of one who seeks for information
merely from curiosity:
"Don't you think that at some time or other one has to settle
what to do with one's life, regardless of whether it is pleasing to
other people or not—I mean in very big and important things?"
Mr. Wycherly, who thought she was still referring to his nephew,
cordially agreed that for most of us such a course at some time or
other is a necessity.
 As it happened, however, Bonnie Margaret was not talking of his
nephew, but of herself. Mr. Wycherly remembered this in the
following October when, Lady Alicia having removed her household
to Edinburgh, a startling rumour shook the village to its very
foundations—a rumour to the effect that Bonnie Margaret had one
night "taken the train" and was married next morning to somebody
in the south of England.
Miss Esperance was much shocked and perturbed, the more so
that she felt it devolved upon her, and her alone, to break this
agitating intelligence to Mr. Wycherly. For was not a relative of his
own the chief culprit? Miss Esperance could never understand Mr.
Wycherly's indifference toward everything that concerned his
relations.
She had heard the news just before supper, but she waited until
that meal was finished lest her communication might spoil his
appetite.
It was their pleasant custom to sit and chat for a while every
evening while Mr. Wycherly drank his single glass of port, and
cracked some nuts, which he generally bestowed next morning upon
the little boys.
He held up his glass of wine to the light, and even in the midst
of her uneasiness Miss Esperance noted with pleasure how steady
was the long, slender hand that held the glass.
"I have heard," Miss Esperance began with a deep sigh, "some
most distressing news to-day about certain good friends of yours."
"Is Mrs. Gloag worse?" Mr. Wycherly asked anxiously, for the
minister's wife was very delicate, and was often quite seriously ill.
 "No, no, nobody is ill; but I fear that our good friend, Lady
Alicia, is in very great trouble. Margaret——"
"Has married against her mother's wish?" Mr. Wycherly
interrupted quickly.
"That's just what she has done—but how did you guess?"
"And she has married," Mr. Wycherly continued, "a nephew of
mine. If I mistake not, Margaret was twenty-one only the other day."
"It seems," Miss Esperance went on, much astonished at the
calmness with which Mr. Wycherly received these grievous tidings,
"that this young man proposed to Margaret some time ago; but that
Lady Alicia wouldn't hear of any engagement. He asked for Margaret
again this summer, and was again refused: though Margaret told her
mother that she intended to marry him and considered herself
engaged to him in spite of everything. And, as you say, directly she
came of age she has done it."
Mr. Wycherly had laid down his glass of port untasted, when
Miss Esperance first began to speak. Now he lifted the decanter and
poured out another, offering it to Miss Esperance. "My dear friend,"
he exclaimed eagerly, "they are married. Nothing can alter that. Let
us drink pretty Margaret's health, and wish her all prosperity and
happiness, and may the man she has chosen try to be worthy of
her!"
Miss Esperance demurred: but Mr. Wycherly continued to lean
across the table with the glass of wine held out toward her, and he
looked so pleading, and she so loved to gratify him, that at last,
though a little under protest, she consented to drink this toast, and
took one sip from the proffered glass of port.
"I wish I could feel that it will turn out well," she said wistfully.
 "She must love him right well," Mr. Wycherly said thoughtfully,
"and she is not a foolish girl. She has judgment and discretion."
"Where love is concerned," said Miss Esperance, "judgment and
discretion generally go to the wall."
And Mr. Wycherly could find no arguments in disproof of this
statement.
Lady Alicia made a special journey to Remote for the express
purpose of reproaching Mr. Wycherly with the conduct of a nephew
he had never seen.
Miss Esperance was out; Mr. Wycherly, as usual, reading in his
room. There Lady Alicia sought him and plunged at once into a
history of the "entanglement," as she called it, concluding with these
words: "I told her never to mention that young man to me again,
and she never did, so of course I concluded that, like a sensible girl,
she had put the whole thing out of her head: but the hussy has
married him, married him without ever a wedding present or a single
new gown, and what can I do? A girl, too, who might have married
anyone, by far the prettiest of the four, and look how well the rest
have married!"
"She must love him very much," Mr. Wycherly said dreamily.
"Pretty Margaret, so gentle always and so quiet. What strength,
what tenacity of purpose under that docile feminine exterior! Dear
Lady Alicia, she is more like you than any of your other daughters."
"Like me!" Lady Alicia almost shouted. "Do you mean to say I
could have run away with any bottle-nosed vintner that ever tasted
port—I, forsooth!"
"But you told me yourself that he is a gentleman, young and
good-looking," Mr. Wycherly expostulated. "If I remember rightly,
too, something of a scholar—and Margaret loves him. She has
proved that beyond all question. God grant that he is worthy of her
love. You can't unmarry them, my dear old friend, and though you
will be angry with me, I must tell you that I think it is well you can't.
You must forgive them both."
"Never," said Lady Alicia with the greatest determination. "She
has chosen her vintner; let her stick to him."
"She will do that in any case," said Mr. Wycherly; "but she will
love her mother none the less, and her mother will, presently, love
her all the more."
"She will do nothing of the kind," Lady Alicia said with
considerable asperity. "You don't seem to realise what a disgraceful
thing your nephew has done in abducting my daughter in this
fashion."
"I thought you said she went to him," Mr. Wycherly suggested
apologetically.
For answer Lady Alicia rose in her wrath and strode out of the
room. Mr. Wycherly hastened after her across the little landing and
down the curly staircase, but he was not in time to open the front
door for her, and she banged it in his face. Mr. Wycherly opened it,
and stood on the threshold just in time to hear the little gate at the
bottom of the garden give an angry click as it fell behind Lady
Alicia's retreating form. He did not attempt to follow her, but stood
where he was, wrapped in a reverie so absorbing that he started
violently as the green gate slammed again and Lady Alicia bustled
up the path holding out her hand, and saying:
"After all, it's not your fault, I don't know why I should scold
you; the only redeeming feature in the whole horrible affair is that
he's your nephew and therefore cannot be an utter scoundrel, but
you must confess it is very hard for me."
Mr. Wycherly took the extended hand and shook it. "You must
forgive her," he said gently, "she would never have done it if she
hadn't been your daughter; think of the courage and determination
——"
"The headstrong folly and foolhardiness," Lady Alicia
interrupted. "I cannot imagine why you keep suggesting I could ever
have done such a disgraceful thing—I always had far too much——"
"Given the same circumstances, you would have behaved in
exactly the same way," Mr. Wycherly interrupted. "My dear Lady
Alicia, you know you would."
"You are a ridiculous and obstinate man," said Lady Alicia;
"much learning hath made you mad, and you know nothing
whatever about women."
All the same she smiled, and she left her hand in Mr. Wycherly's.
It was not unpleasant to her to be considered capable of romance;
her life had been so safe and seemly always, a little monotonous
and commonplace, perhaps, but she had once been young.
"I don't know much," Mr. Wycherly answered humbly; "but
surely character is the same in man or woman, and given a certain
character a certain line of conduct is inevitable."
"And you think it is inevitable that I should forgive Margaret?"
"Assuredly," said Mr. Wycherly.
"As I said before"—here Lady Alicia thought fit to withdraw her
hand—"you are an ignorant man: but we won't quarrel. Time will
show whether you or I know most about me."
 She turned to walk to the gate where her carriage was waiting.
He helped her in and shut the door upon her in absolute silence.
Then, just as the man was driving off, he asked: "What do you think
they would like for a wedding present?"
"Man, you are incorrigible," exclaimed Lady Alicia, but her brow
was smooth and her eyes smiling.
Mr. Wycherly stood at the green gate for some time, lost hi
thought. As he turned to walk up the path to the house he said
aloud: "I should like to know what that young man has done that he
should be singled out by the gods for such supreme good fortune."
When the days grew long once more Lady Alicia came back to
the "big house," but no fair-haired Margaret came to play with the
little boys.
"Where is she?" asked Montagu of his tutor. "Why doesn't she
come?"
"She is married," said Mr. Wycherly; "she has to stay with her
husband."
"When I marry," said Montagu, "I shall marry somebody like
Margaret; then she'll stay with me and I shall never be lonely."
"When you marry," Mr. Wycherly said very seriously, "take care
of just one thing. Take care that she is kind."
"I'd like her to be beautiful, too," Montagu said eagerly,
"beautiful and tall, like Margaret."
"I hope she will be beautiful, but kindness comes first," and Mr.
Wycherly spoke with conviction, as one who knew.
"How can one tell if she is kind?" Montagu asked.
"Compare her with your aunt, Montagu: if she stands such
comparison, she is all your best desires need seek."
 "I will remember," Montagu said solemnly, "kind and beautiful—
but the kindness must come first. I wish Margaret hadn't been in
such a hurry, she would have done beautifully."

CHAPTER X
THE SABBATH

He ordered a' things late and air';

He ordered folk to stand at prayer
(Although I cannae just mind where
He gave the warnin').
An' pit pomatum on their hair
On Sabbath mornin'.
R.L.S.

The Sabbath day at Burnhead was a long, long day. A day wholly
given up to "the public and private exercises of God's worship."
For Montagu, indeed, the shadow of the Sabbath began to steal
over the horizon as early as Friday night: and it was only when he
woke on Monday morning secure in the consciousness that the first
day of the week was safely passed, that life assumed again its
habitually cheerful aspect.
Miss Esperance was a staunch Presbyterian, and belonged to
the strictest sect of the so-called Free Kirk. Therefore did she
consider it her duty to take Montagu twice to church in addition to
superintending his instruction in Bible history and the shorter
catechism.
Montagu liked the scripture lessons well enough and found it no
hardship to read the Bible aloud to his aunt for hours at a time; but
nearly four hours' church with only the blessed interval of dinner in
between was a heavy discipline for even a naturally quiet small boy,
and sometimes Montagu was, inwardly, very rebellious.
Mr. Wycherly begged him off the afternoon service as often as
he could as a companion for Edmund, volunteering to look after both
children so that Robina, as well as Elsa, could attend church. Mr.
Wycherly was an Episcopalian, and as there was no "English" church
within walking distance, he said he read the service to himself every
Sunday morning.
When Edmund was four years old, Miss Esperance decided that
it was time he, too, should share the benefit of the Reverend Peter
Gloag's ministrations. Edmund appeared pleased at the suggestion,
for it was, like his knickerbockers, to a certain extent an
acknowledgment that he had arrived at boy's estate. Montagu went
to church, and why not he? It was evidently the correct thing to do,
and although he could not remember to have seen his brother
particularly uplifted by his privileges in that respect, nobody else
seemed much exhilarated either. Hitherto, he had spent his Sunday
mornings largely in the society of Mr. Wycherly, who, as all toys were
locked up in a tall cupboard on Saturday night, connived at all sorts
of queer games, invented on the spur of the moment by the
ingenious Edmund.
"I'm goin' to kirk! I'm goin' to kirk!" Edmund chanted gaily on
the appointed day.
 He wore a new white sailor suit with pockets, and in one pocket
was a penny to "pirle" in the plate: in the other a wee packet of
Wotherspoon's peppermints for refreshment during the sermon. His
curly hair was brushed till it shone like the brass knocker on the
front door when Elsa had newly cleaned it, and his round, rosy face
was framed by a large new sailor hat that looked like a substantial
sort of halo. White socks and neat black shoes with straps completed
Edmund's toilet, and his aunt thought that never yet had the
Bethune family possessed a worthier scion.
Mr. Wycherly assisted to direct Edmund's fat, pink fingers into a
tight, white cotton glove, and stood at the green gate watching the
departure of Miss Esperance and her great-nephews, till the small
black figure, with a little white sailor on either side, had vanished
from his view.
He marvelled greatly at the temerity of Miss Esperance in taking
Edmund to church at this tender age, though it was not the age that
mattered so much as Edmund. What Miss Esperance called the
"Bethune temperament" was very marked in that sunny-haired small
boy, and it was apt to manifest itself unexpectedly, wholly regardless
of time or place.
The house seemed queerly quiet and deserted as Mr. Wycherly
returned to his room. Mause followed him and thrust a cold, wet
nose into his hand, looking up at him from under her tangled hair
with puzzled, pleading eyes.
"Poor old lady," said Mr. Wycherly, "you are lonely, too, are you?
We'll go for a little walk when the bell stops."
The church was a bare, white-washed, barn-like edifice, where
none of the windows were ever opened, and the unchanged air was
always redolent of hair-oil and strong peppermint.
Edmund smiled and nodded at his friends as he pattered up the
aisle to his aunt's pew, and when Andrew Mowat, the precentor,
looking unwontedly stern and unapproachable, took his seat under
the pulpit, the little boy wondered what could have annoyed him
that he looked so cross. On week-days Andrew, who kept the little
grocer's shop in the village, was the most sociable and friendly of
creatures, and always bestowed "a twa-three acid-drops" on the
little boys when they went with Robina to his shop.
But to-day Andrew was far removed from worldly cares or
enjoyments, and Edmund listened to him in awed astonishment as
he wailed out the tune of the first psalm, "My heart not haughty is,
O Lord," to be gradually taken up more or less tunefully by the
whole congregation.
For the first half-hour of service Edmund behaved beautifully. He
held a large Bible open upside down, with white cotton fingers
spread well out over the back. He hummed the tune diligently and
not too loud during the first psalm, and stood quite moderately still
during the first long prayers.
It was not until the minister said: "Let us read in God's word
from the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Kings, beginning at the
fifth verse," that the troubles of Miss Esperance really began.
At the announcement of the chapter to be read, there was an
instantaneous fluttering and turning over of leaves among the
congregation to find their places, and Edmund, zealous to be no whit
behind the rest in this pious exercise, fluttered the leaves of his Bible
violently to and fro for some time after every one else had settled
into seemly silence to follow the reading. Such a noisy rustling did
he make that several of the congregation raised their heads and
glanced disapprovingly in the direction of Miss Bethune's pew. That
gentle lady laid a detaining hand over Edmund's Bible to close it, but
he pulled it violently away from her with both hands, opened it
again, and held it ostentatiously against his nose, leaning forward to
look over the top at Montagu, who sat on the other side of his aunt.
Then to the horror of Miss Esperance, he began to imitate the
minister; joining in the reading wherever the oft-repeated "And the
rest of the acts of," whoever it happened to be, "are they not
written," etc., in low but perfectly audible tones. Edmund evidently
looked upon the phrase as a sort of chorus, waited for it, seized
upon it, and joined in it gleefully, holding his Bible at arm's length as
though he were singing at a concert.
Poor Miss Esperance turned crimson and bent over the little boy,
whispering, "You must be perfectly quiet, my dear, you must not say
a single word."
Edmund, still holding his Bible stiffly out in front of him, looked
reproachfully at his aunt and was quiet for a few minutes. Then
came "and the rest of the acts of Pekah and all that he did," which
was too many for him. The name was attractive: "Pekah! Pekah!
Pekah!" he whispered, then faster: "Pekah, Pekah, Pekah, Pekah,
Pekah, Pekah," exactly as he was wont to repeat "Peter Piper picked
a peck of pickled peppers," which the minister's wife herself had
taught him.
His aunt laid a firm hand over his mouth and looked at him with
all the severity her sweet old face could achieve. He realised that
she was not to be trifled with, and set down his Bible on the book-
board in front of him with an angry thump, at the same time leaning
forward to frown reprovingly at Montagu.
"When will he stop?" he whispered to his aunt, pointing a
scornful finger at the minister, "he's making far more noise nor me."
"Hush," murmured Miss Esperance again. For three minutes he
was comparatively quiet, then it occurred to him to take off his
gloves. This he achieved by holding the end of each cotton finger in
his teeth and pulling violently. Then he blew into each one, as he
had seen his aunt do with hers, finally squeezing them into a tight
ball and cramming them into the tiny pocket of his blouse.
"Pocket" instantly suggested the pockets of his trousers. His
penny had been disposed of on entrance, 'twas but a fleeting joy.
But the packet of Wotherspoon's sweeties remained. The minister
had now engaged in prayer, the congregation was standing up;
Edmund's doings were comparatively inconspicuous, and Miss
Esperance permitted her thoughts to soar heavenward once more.
Edmund arranged the contents of his packet in a neat square on the
top of his Bible on the book-board in front of him, and proceeded to
taste several of the little white comfits, putting each one back in its
place wet and sticky, when he had savoured its sweetness for a
minute or two. By accident he knocked one of the unsucked
sweeties off the Bible, and it rolled away gaily under the seat. In a
moment Edmund had dived after it. He squeezed behind his aunt
and could not resist giving one of Montagu's legs a sharp pinch as
he beheld those members and nothing more from his somewhat
lowly and darksome position. Montagu leapt into the air with a
scarcely suppressed yelp, that startled more than Miss Esperance,
who, at the same moment, felt an unwonted something shoving
against her legs. She feared that some dog had got into the pew,
and opened her eyes only to find that one great-nephew had
disappeared from her side and was squirming under the seat. She
also beheld the neatly arranged rows of sweeties on the top of the
Bible.
It took but a moment to sweep these into the satin bag she
always carried, but it took considerably longer to restore Edmund to
an upright position, and when this was done, his face was streaked
with dust and his small, hot hands were black.
Edmund lolled; Edmund fidgeted; Edmund even infected
Montagu so that he fidgeted too. Every five minutes or so Edmund
whispered, "Can we go home now?" till at last peace descended
upon poor Miss Esperance, for in the middle of the sermon Edmund
fell fast asleep with his head against her shoulder.
Miss Esperance looked quite pale and exhausted as she took her
place at early dinner that day, but Edmund was rosy and cheerful,
and greeted Mr. Wycherly as "Dearie" with rapturous affection when
that gentleman took his place at the bottom of the table. He always
had dinner with the children on Sundays.
At first the small boys were so hungry that very little was said,
but presently when pudding came Mr. Wycherly asked: "Well,
Edmund, how did you get on at church?"
Edmund laid down his spoon: "I'm never going back," he said
decidedly, "it is a 'bomnable place."
"Edmund!" exclaimed Miss Esperance, "how can you say such a
thing. You, unfortunately, did not behave particularly well, though I
forgive that, as it was the first time—but, remember, you will go to
the church every Sunday, and you will learn to be a good boy when
you're there."
"It is," Edmund repeated, unconvinced, "a 'bomnable place, a
'bomnation of desolation place."
The phrase had occurred several times in the earlier part of the
minister's sermon before Edmund fell asleep, and commended itself
to his youthful imagination as being singularly forceful and
expressive.
Miss Esperance sighed. She really felt incapable of further
wrestling with Edmund just then, and looked appealingly at Mr.
Wycherly. But he dropped his eyes and refused to meet her gaze.
"He," Edmund suddenly resumed, pointing with his spoon at Mr.
Wycherly, "never goes there. He"—with even more emphasis and the
greatest deliberation—"is a—very—wise—man."
Here the naughty boy wagged his curly head and spoke with
such barefaced and perfect mimicry of his aunt, that again catching
Mr. Wycherly's eye, she burst into laughter, in which that gentleman
was thankful to join her.
"More puddin', please!" Edmund exclaimed, seizing the
propitious moment to hand up his plate.
That afternoon neither of the little boys accompanied Miss
Esperance to church.

CHAPTER XI
LOAVES AND FISHES
I am no quaker at my food. I confess I am not indifferent to the
kinds of it.—CHARLES LAMB.

On the following Sabbath day Edmund was a-missing directly it was

time to get ready for church. He was to be found neither in house
nor garden, and Miss Esperance came to the sorrowful conclusion
that the Bethune temperament had again asserted itself, and that
Edmund had, of deliberate purpose, effaced himself so that he
should not be made to go to church. She was not on this occasion in
the least perturbed by the fact that the small boy was lost. She had
no fears as to his safety, but she was most grievously upset by this
deliberate flying in the face of authority, and set off for church,
looking very grave and almost stern, with only Montagu in
attendance.
Mr. Wycherly had shut himself in his room during the hunt for
Edmund. He had a nervous dread of scenes of any kind, and when
either of the little boys was punished he suffered horribly. He fully
recognised the necessity for occasional correction, especially in the
case of a small boy so chock-full of original sin as Edmund. But none
the less did he undergo much mental anguish on the occasions when
such punishment took place. He could not altogether approve of
certain of the methods of Miss Esperance, although he reverenced
her far too much to indulge in any conscious criticism.
Remote had always been marked out from other houses by the
immense tranquillity of its chief inmates, to whom fret and fuss were
unknown. People were never scolded at Remote, unless by Elsa,
when she was quite sure Miss Esperance was out of hearing.
 When Montagu and Edmund were naughty they were punished
by Miss Esperance, who always, and manifestly, suffered much more
than the delinquents.
A favourite mode of correction in days when Miss Esperance
was young was the substitution of bread and water for whatever
meal happened to come nearest the time of the offence: and for the
little boys poignancy was added to this dismal diet by the knowledge
that their aunt tasted nothing else at her own meal during such
times of abstinence for them. From such punishment, all suspicion of
revenge—which, in the chastened one, so often nullifies the desired
result—was entirely eliminated; and the children quite understood
that they were being corrected for the good of their souls, and not
because their aunt required a vent for her annoyance at their
misdeeds.
Sunday dinner, however—the day on which by his own request
Mr. Wycherly took his mid-day meal with Miss Esperance and the
children—had hitherto been exempt from any such punitive
mortification of the carnal appetites. Indeed, Mr. Wycherly had
imbued it with a certain Elizabethan flavour of festivity and
cheerfulness, and here, greatly to his surprise, he was warmly
seconded by Elsa, who grudged no extra cooking to make the
Sabbath-day dinner particularly appetising. From the time that Mr.
Wycherly had asserted his right to throw his all into the common lot,
things had been easier at Remote, and old Elsa did not forget his
enthusiastic eagerness to further her endeavours that her mistress
should have a peaceful and proper breakfast.
Therefore when it became the established custom for Mr.
Wycherly to carve the joint on Sundays, she was ever ready to fall in
with any small plans he might make for the benefit of the little boys.
And now Edmund had been naughty on the Sabbath, and Mr.
Wycherly knew what to expect.
Bread, watered by his tears, for Edmund. Bread, seasoned only
by sorrowful reflection, for Miss Esperance.
Banishment for hungry Edmund if he cried aloud, and there
were ducks for dinner, large fat ducks sent by Lady Alicia. Mr.
Wycherly could smell the stuffing even now. Who would believe that
the smell of sage and onions could bear so mournful a message?
The Greek characters of the Philebus he held in his hand danced
before his eyes. He could not give his mind to the philosophy of
beauty or the theory of pleasure. The doctrine of æsthetical, moral,
and intellectual harmonies, pleasing as it was to him on ordinary
occasions, failed to hold him just then, when all his mental vision
was concentrated on a chubby, tearful figure whose misdeeds would
debar him from duck for dinner.
Mr. Wycherly laid down his "Plato" and began to pace the room
restlessly, finally taking up his stand at the window looking out on
the garden. Where was that boy? Where had the monkey hidden
himself? He was not with Mause, for Mr. Wycherly could see the old
dog lying in a patch of sunshine on the little plot of grass.
He went back to his bookshelf for comfort: he wanted
something human, something warm and faulty and sympathetic, and
his eye lighted on "Tristram Shandy." "Tristram Shandy" was tight in
the shelf—squeezed in between the "Phædo" and Hooker's
"Ecclesiastical Polity"—Mr. Wycherly was nervous and agitated, and
he must have pulled it out clumsily, for it fell to the ground with a
thump.
 As he stooped to recover it he caught sight of a plump brown
leg protruding from beneath his sofa. He went down on his knees to
look more closely, and there, cuddled up under the sofa, his curly
head pillowed on his arm, lay Edmund, fast asleep. Edmund
possessed a Wellingtonian capacity for falling asleep whenever he
kept still. He had hidden under the sofa in Mr. Wycherly's room just
before that gentleman took refuge there from the grieved annoyance
of Miss Esperance at her grand-nephew's defection. Mr. Wycherly
had shut his door, and no one dreamt of disturbing him to look there
for the missing one.
Here was a pretty kettle of fish!
Although Mr. Wycherly knew that Miss Esperance would
exonerate him from any actual participation in Edmund's truancy, he
was assuredly accessory after the fact, and what was to be done?
"I hope he won't hit his head when he wakes up," Mr. Wycherly
thought concernedly. "What a beautiful child he is!" and he knelt on
where he was gazing admiringly at the slumbering cupid.
Stronger and stronger grew the savour of sage and onions
throughout the little house. It penetrated even to Mause in the
garden, and she arose from her patch of sunshine and sniffed
inquisitively.
Mr. Wycherly grew stiff with kneeling, and rose to his feet. At
the same moment Edmund rolled over and hit his leg against the
edge of the sofa. It woke him, and the instant Edmund awoke he
was wide awake. "Dearie, are you zere?" he demanded. He could
see Mr. Wycherly's legs, and no more, from where he was lying. In
another minute he was sitting on Mr. Wycherly's knee while that
elderly scholar cudgelled his brains for some form of remonstrance
which would bring home to this very youthful delinquent the
impropriety of his conduct.
"Dearie," Edmund exclaimed with disarming sweetness, "aren't
you glad I'm here wiv you?" Here he rubbed his soft face against Mr.
Wycherly's. "What a good smell! isn't it? I'm so hungry: is there a
bikkit about?"
Mr. Wycherly steeled his heart: "You know, sonnie," he said very
gravely, "that you ought not to be here at all; you ought to be with
your dear aunt in church."
Edmund looked at Mr. Wycherly in reproachful surprise. "In
church?" he echoed, as though such a possibility had occurred to
him for the first time that morning.
"In church," Mr. Wycherly repeated. "Your dear aunt expected
you to go there with her and with Montagu, and she was very sad
that she had to go without you. It was not right of you to hide,
sonnie. It was neither kind nor polite nor straightforward."
"You doesn't go," Edmund argued, staring gloomily at Mr.
Wycherly. "Why mus' I?"
"You must go because your dear aunt wishes it," Mr. Wycherly
replied, ignoring the first part of Edmund's remark.
"Would you go if see wissed it?"
"I would. But you see, for me it is different. I was brought up in
a different kind of church, and I am no longer a little boy. Miss
Esperance has never asked me to go to church with her."
"Why hasn't see ast you?"
"Because, as I tell you, I was brought up in a different church."
"Why can't I be brought up in your church? Then we needn't
neither of us never go," Edmund suggested, smiling radiantly, as
though he had solved the difficulty.
Mr. Wycherly sighed deeply. "But I did go," he exclaimed. "I
always went when I was a little boy, every Sunday, and afterward at
Oxford I went nearly every day as well."
Edmund's face fell. He desired to belong to no church that
required daily attendance. Mr. Wycherly's looks were so serious that
the little boy began to be anxious.
"What will Aunt Esp'ance do, do you sink?"
"I fear she will feel compelled to punish you."
"Bed?" Edmund inquired uneasily.
"No, I fear, I very greatly fear it will be dinner——"
Mr. Wycherly felt the little figure stiffen in his arms, as without a
word Edmund laid his head down on his old friend's shoulder. The
child lay quite still, and glancing down at him Mr. Wycherly saw how
the red mouth drooped at the corners, and the blue eyes were
screwed up tight to keep back the tears. No such dread contingency
had crossed Edmund's mind till this moment, and it swept over him
with devastating force. Not to share in the Sunday dinner, that
cheerful meal, when Mr. Wycherly made jokes and Aunt Esperance
sat beaming in her Sunday silks; when hungry little boys were never
refused two, even three, helpings of everything. It was a dreadful
dispensation.
Edmund gave a short, smothered sob and buried his face in Mr.
Wycherly's neck.
"Perhaps," the grave voice went on, and Edmund opened one
tearful eye, as though the gloom of his outlook were pierced by
some ray of hope, "perhaps if you went to your aunt and told her
how sorry you are, and that you promise on your honour as a
gentleman you will never try to get out of going to church again—
perhaps she might forgive you this once. If you can tell her this and
mean it, my son, every word, I think that she may be induced to
forgive you—just this once."
The green gate creaked, there was a rush of feet on the
staircase as Montagu made straight for Mr. Wycherly's room.
"Here you are," he exclaimed. "I thought you'd be here
somehow—what's the matter?"
Mr. Wycherly put Edmund gently from off his knee, and rose
from his chair.
"Wait here with Montagu, sonnie," he said. "I will see Miss
Esperance first," and he left the room, carefully shutting the door
behind him.
"Is Aunt Esp'ance very sorry?" Edmund asked anxiously. He did
not ask if she were angry, for that she had never been with him.
"I don't think she's as sorry as she was at first," Montagu said
consolingly. "We met Mrs. Gloag as we were coming out and Aunt
Esperance told how you'd hidden, and Mrs. Gloag laughed, and after
that I don't think she was so sorry."
The door was opened and Mr. Wycherly came back. "Go to your
aunt in her room, Edmund," he said, "and remember what I told
you."
Edmund trotted off obediently.
A few minutes later Robina rang the dinner bell. Edmund and
his aunt descended the curly staircase together, hand in hand.
"I told her I was sorry," he announced to Mr. Wycherly, who was
waiting at the dining-room door that Miss Esperance might pass in
first. "I'm going to church zis afternoon. I'm going," he added
gleefully, "becos' zere's ducks for dinner."

CHAPTER XII
THE VILLAGE

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
POPE.

"Our society may be small but it is extremely select," Miss Maggie

Moffat used to say on such occasions as friends from the South-side
of Edinburgh used to visit her.
"It is what we have always sought after," Miss Jeanie, her sister,
would chime in. "Quality not quantity, and nowhere could we have
found superior quality if we had gone over the whole of the British
Isles to look for it."
None of the earlier inhabitants of Burnhead ever quite fathomed
how or why the Misses Moffat had come to live there. The fact
remained, however, that one term day they had taken a small house
in the middle of the village street: a house that had been empty for
many years. Its original name was "Rowan Cottage," because there
was a rowan tree in the back garden, but when the Misses Moffat
took it they persuaded the landlord to change the name to "Rowan
Lodge," the only lodge in the neighbourhood save that which
guarded the entrance at Lady Alicia's drive gate. The name was
painted on the front of the house in large, clear characters, and it
looked, the Misses Moffat thought, extremely well on the pink note-
paper with scalloped edges which they affected in their
correspondence.
They were ladies of uncertain age; that is to say, of the kind of
age to which direct reference is never made.
They were not serenely and beautifully old like Miss Esperance,
nor sturdily and frankly middle-aged like Lady Alicia, and by no
stretch of imagination could they be considered young like Bonnie
Margaret. They were, as they themselves would have put it, "of a
quite suitable age for matrimony, not giddy girls, you understand,
but nice, sensible, douce young women."
Miss Jeanie was probably not more than forty-five, and Miss
Maggie some six years older. They were both moderately tall,
moderately stout, and of a healthy, homely aspect which did not
challenge observation. Miss Jeanie, indeed, wore a curly fringe, and
on muddy days a serge golf-skirt that barely reached her substantial
ankles, but Miss Maggie's mouse-coloured hair was brushed back
over a cushion and displayed every inch of her intellectual forehead.
Miss Maggie took in "Wise Words," and had literary leanings toward
everything of an improving character.
At one time they had kept a "fancy-work emporium" on the
South-side, but they had not been dependent upon their sales of
Berlin wool or crochet cotton, and as the emporium was by no
means thronged with customers it had seemed good to them to
retire from business and seek in the country that seclusion and
select society which their genteel souls hungered after.
 They were sincerely convinced that the emporium of the past
could not in any way preclude their reception into such society.
"It could not exactly be called trade, me dear," Miss Maggie
argued, "for you see our clientèle was so exceedingly select. We
were never called upon to serve a man in all the years——"
"Not so very many years, Maggie," Miss Jeanie would interrupt.
"During the time our residence was above the emporium," Miss
Maggie continued calmly. "That makes a very great difference.
Anybody can come into an ordinary shop. A stationer's now—a man
might burst into a stationer's at any minute to buy envelopes or
elastic bands, or a bit rubber: but no man would dream of entering a
—place where Berlin wools and fingering and sewing silks are to be
had. And you know, me dear, it always seems to me that so long as
no strange man has had the opportunity to accost one, one's
delicacy cannot be said to have suffered in any way."
"I've heard," said Miss Jeanie, with a little sigh, "that in London
one may be accosted on the public street. It must be terrible to be
accosted by a strange man. I think I should faint away at his feet
from sheer terror."
"Indeed," replied Miss Maggie, bridling. "I should do no such
thing. I would freeze him with a glance."
So far, however, neither of these ladies had been called upon
either to faint or to freeze. Mankind had passed them by in decorous
silence. Neither of them had ever been accosted by anyone more
alarming than a village urchin, and their delicacy and their gentility
remained unimpaired. For truly they were vastly genteel.
The real and chief attractions of Burnhead had been that the
rent of their modest residence was very small, that the "big house"