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 Of course she had been a mere child then, but in those days the Earl had never thought of objecting to his playing all day long with the little lady whose inclinations toward her old playmate now gave her grandfather such anxiety. So Micky had lay lessons of the curate—an explosive, tennis-playing, supercilious young man—and on Sundays recited his catechism and the collects to the vicar, who was really interested only in geology and model tenements, and the rest of the time—that is, until he went to Harrow—he spent racing over the lawns of Toppingham or paddling in a punt on the muddy little “Avon” with the little girl who, now that he was a grown man and ready to go to Sandhurst maybe (if his uncle approved), was father and mother and sister and sweetheart to him, all in one.

For Micky did not like his uncle the vicar, and neither did Evelyn, and both of them imagined Micky as very much oppressed and unfairly treated, and believed themselves to be the victims of a conspiracy between this wicked ecclesiastic (who was really a very harmless person) and the Earl of Toppingham, whose name was Richard de Coyne St. Gower Hugh