Page:The golden age.djvu/265

'EXIT TYRANNUS' hard in my face for direction as to how the situation was to be taken. But I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and not bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days like the present seemed to hang my heavens with black?

Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us, swinging on a gate and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all the beasts appear in due order, jargoning in their several tongues, and every verse begins with the couplet:

The fateful exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory entirely. I touched him on the shoulder. 'She's going to-day!' I said. Edward's carol subsided like a water-tap turned off. 'So she is!' he replied, and got down at once off the gate. And we returned to the house without another word.

At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for manner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong 195