CHAPTER 2.II.
Dora had been out three seasons when these things happened.

I remember sharing Edward Harris's anxiety in no slight degree as to how the situation would resolve itself when she came, the situation consisting so considerably in his eyes of the second Mrs.Harris, who had complicated it further with three little red-cheeked boys, all of the age to be led about the station on very small ponies, and not under any circumstances to be allowed in the drawing-room when one went to tea with their mother.

No one, except perhaps poor Ted himself, was more interested than I to observe how the situation did resolve itself, in the decision of Mrs.Harris that the boys, the two eldest at least, must positively begin the race for the competitive examinations of the future without further delay, and that she must as positively be domiciled in England 'to be near' them, at all events until they had well made the start.

I should have been glad to see them ride their ponies up and down the Mall a bit longer, poor little chaps; they were still very cherubic to be invited to take a view of competitive examinations, however distant; but Mrs.Harris's conviction was not to be overcome.

So they went home to begin, and she went with them, leaving Dora in possession of her father, her father's house, his pay, his precedence, and all that was his.