Lady Victoria Campbell

FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE 37
occasions. The tables, with their various occupants,
characteristically idle or conscientiously working, and
one figure on the sofa, who was never known to shirk
the daily round. The coveted seat in the window,
where the lawn with its hosts and guests were under
inspection, or at Inveraray, where from the study
window the eye fell on a vision of many waters,
encircled by hills whose outlines are more indelibly
imprinted on the tablets of memory than the lessons
which were, or were not, committed to its care.
The short lesson hours over, there came the school-
room tea, often added to by an incursion of the
brothers and guests, attracted by the bursts of
conversation and the laughter of the very livery
party. The light of " long ago " streams in at the
window of that room and falls on the sunny heads ;
the table set with scones and gooseberries, and very
literally presiding at its head the small, prim figure
of the well-known Miss Johnstone. Her pupils,
struck with the intensely English ideas of their
governess, early christened her " Pock Pudding."
In spite of the gravest efforts of the seniors, the name
rapidly became fixed to the first part of the title,
and soon every member of the family, and those
" without," were familiar with and used this un-
melodious nickname. The Duke found in her a
valuable helper in correcting for the press the proof
sheets of " The Reign of Law." Many an enlightening
argument as to style and punctuation, and the exact
definition of a scientific fact, was carried on over the
luncheon table, to the amusement of Mr. Strahan,