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166 well, though he could not remember ever having been there before—and cried out— "Thy task done? Mine is, too. Old Parrot-nose kept me hard at it, but I thought of thee, and for this once I did all his biddings. So now we are free. Come play ball in the garden!"

His cousin looked up from her sampler, set the frame down and jumped up.

"I am so glad," she said. "I do hate this horrid sampler!"

And as she said it Dickie had a most odd feeling, rather as if a clock had struck, or had stopped striking—a feeling of sudden change. But he could not wait to wonder about it or to question what it was that he really felt. His cousin was waiting.

"Come, Elfrida," he said, and held out his hand. They went together into the garden.

Now if you have read a book called "The House of Arden" you will already know that Dickie's cousins were called Edred and Elfrida, and that their father, Lord Arden, had a beautiful castle by the sea, as well as a house in London, and that he and his wife were great favourites at the Court of King James the First. If you have not read that book, and didn't already know these things well, you know them now. And Arden was Dickie's own name too, in this old life, and his father was Sir Richard Arden, of Deptford and Aylesbury. And his tutor was Mr. Parados, called Parrot-nose "for short" by his disrespectful pupils.

Dickie and Elfrida played ball, and they