CHAPTER IV.

MICHAELMAS-DAY OVER.

Mrs. Shaw ordered dinner presently; and while it was being served, she desired Phil to brush his brother's clothes, as they were dusty from his ride. All the while he was brushing (which he did very roughly), and all the first part of dinner-time, Phil continued to tease Hugh about what he had said on the top of the coach. Mrs. Shaw spoke of the imprudence of talking freely before strangers; and Hugh could have told her that he did not need such a lecture at the very time that he found the same thing by his experience. He did wish Phil would stop. If anybody should ask him a question, he could not answer without crying. Then he remembered how his mother expected him to bear things; and he almost wished he was at home with her now, after all his longing to be away. This thought nearly made him cry again; so he tried to dwell on how his mother would expect him to bear things: but neither of them had thought that morning, beside his box, that the first trial would come from Phil. This again made him so nearly cry that his uncle observed his twitching face, and, without noticing him, said that he, for his part, did not want to see little boys wise before they had time to learn; and that the most silent companion he had ever been shut up with in a coach was certainly the least agreeable: and he went on to relate an adventure which has happened to more persons than one. He had found the gentleman in the corner, with the shaggy coat, to be a bear—a tame bear, which had to take the quickest mode of conveyance, in order to be at a distant fair in good time. Mr. Shaw spun out his story, so that Hugh quite recovered himself, and laughed as much as anybody at his uncle having formed a bad opinion of Bruin in the early twilight, for his incivility in not bowing to the passe