Fated to Be Free by Jean Ingelow (page 4)

“You mean that we can tell my gardener’s son that my cousin (whom he no longer cares for) is in love with him, and, by our assistance and persuasion, we can, if we choose, bring on as foolish a marriage as ever was contemplated, and one as disadvantageous to ourselves. Now for the alternative. What can it be?”

“Mrs. Melcombe can take Laura on the Continent again, and she proposed to do it forthwith.”

“And leave her boy at school? A very good thing for him.”

“No, she means to take him also, and not come back till Joseph is at the other end of the world.”

“Two months will see him there.”

“Well, John, now you have stated the case, it does seem a strange fancy of mine to wish to interfere, and if to interfere could possibly be to our advantage—-“

“You would not have thought of it! No, I am sure of that. Now my advice is, that we let them alone all round. I don’t believe, in the first place, that Joe Swan, now he has change, freedom, and a rise in life before him, would willingly marry Laura if he might. I am not at all sure that, if it came to the point, she would willingly marry him at such short notice, and leave every friend she has in the world. I think she would shrink back, for she can know nothing worth mentioning of him. As to the boy, how do you know that a tour may not be a very fine thing for him? It must be better than moping at Melcombe under petticoat government; and even if Joe married Laura to-morrow, we could not prevent Mrs. Melcombe from taking him on the Continent whenever she chose.”

Emily was silent.

“And what made you talk of a runaway match?” continued John.

“Because she told Giles that the last time she saw Joseph he proposed to her to sneak away, get married before a magistrate, and go off without saying a word to anybody.”

“Fools,” exclaimed John, “both of them! No, we cannot afford to have any runaway matches–and of such a sort too! I should certainly interfere if I thought there was any danger of that.”

“I hope you would. He wanted her to propose some scheme. I think scorn of all scheming. If she had really meant to marry him, his part should have been to see that she did it in a way that would not make it worse for her afterwards. He should have told Mrs. Melcombe fairly that she could not prevent it, and he should have taken her to church and married her like a man before plenty of witnesses in the place where she is known. If he had not shown such a craven spirit, I almost think I would have taken his part. Now, John, I know what you think; but I should have felt just the same if Valentine had not made himself ridiculous, and if I was quite sure that this would not end in a runaway match after all, and the _True Blue_ be full of it.”

“I believe you,” said John; “and I always had a great respect for you, ‘Mrs. Nemily.'”

“What are you laughing at, then?”

“Perhaps at the matronly dignity with which you have been laying down the law.”

“Is that all? Oh, I always do that now I am married, John.”

“You don’t say so! Well, Joe Swan has worked hard at improving himself; but though good has come out of it in the end for him, it is certainly a very queer affair. Why, in the name of common sense, couldn’t Laura be contented with somebody in her own sphere?”

“I should like to know why Laura was so anxious the matter should be concealed from you,” said Emily.

“Most likely she remembers that Swan is in my employment, or she may also be ‘troubled with intuitions,’ and know by intuition what I think of her.”

“And how is Aunt Christie?” asked Emily, after little more talk concerning Joseph’s affairs.

“Well and happy; I do not believe it falls to the lot of any old woman to be happier in this _oblate spheroid_. The manner in which she acts dragon over Miss C. is a joy to me, the only observer. She always manages that we shall never meet excepting in her presence; when I go into the schoolroom to read prayers, I invariably find her there before me. She insists, also, on presiding at all the schoolroom meals. How she found out the state of things here I cannot tell, but I thankfully let her alone. I never go out to smoke a cigar in the evening, and notice a stately female form stepping forth also, but Aunt Christie is sure to come briskly stumping in her wake, ready to join either her or me.”

“You don’t mean to imply anything?”

“Of course not! but you yourself, before you married, were often known to take my arm at flower-shows, &c., in order to escape from certain poor fellows who sighed in vain.”

“Yes, you were good about that; and you remind me of it, no doubt, in order to claim the like friendliness from me now the tables are turned. John, the next time I take your arm in public it will be to extend my matronly countenance to those modest efforts of yours at escaping attention, for you know yourself to be quite unworthy of notice!”

“Just so; you express my precise feeling.”

“It is a pity you and Grand are so rich!”

“Why? You do not insinuate, I hope, that I and my seven are merely eligible on that account. Now, what are you looking at me for, with that little twist in your lips that always means mischief?”

“Because I like you, and I am afraid you are being spoilt, John. I do so wish you had a nice wife. I should? at least, if you wished it yourself.”

“A saving clause! Have you and Fred discussed me, madam?”

“No, I declare that we have not.”

“I hope you have nobody to recommend, because I won’t have her! I always particularly disliked red hair.”

“Now what makes you suppose I was thinking of any one who has red hair?”

“You best know yourself whether you were _not_.”

“Well,” said Emily, after a pause for reflection, “now you mention it (I never did), I do not see that you could do better.”

“I often think so myself, and that is partly why I am so set against it! No, Emily, it would be a shame to joke about an excellent and pleasant woman. The fact is, I have not the remotest intention of ever marrying again at all.”

“Very well,” said Emily, “it is not my affair; it was your own notion entirely that I wanted to help you to a wife.”

And she sat a moment cogitating, and thinking that the lady of the golden head had probably lost her chance by showing too openly that she was ready.

“What are you looking at?” said John. “At the paths worn in my carpets? That’s because all the rooms are thoroughfares. Only fancy any woman marrying a poor fellow whose carpets get into that state every three or four years.”

“Oh,” said Emily, “if that was likely to stand in your light, I could soon show you how to provide a remedy.”

“But my father hates the thoughts of bricks and mortar,” said John, amused at her seriousness, “and I inherit that feeling.”

“John, the north front of your house is very ugly. You have five French windows on a line–one in each of these rooms, one in the hall; you would only have to run a narrow passage-like conservatory in front of them, enter it by the hall window, and each room by its own window, put a few plants in the conservatory, and the thing is done in a fortnight. Every room has its back window; you would get into the back garden as you do now; you need not touch the back of the house, that is all smothered in vines and creepers, as you are smothered in children!”

“The matter shall have my gravest consideration,” said John, “provided you never mention matrimony to me again as long as you live.”

“Very well,” said Emily, “I promise; but there is St. George coming. I must not forget to tell you that I saw Joseph this morning at a distance; he was standing in the lea of the pigstye, and cogitating in the real moony style.”

“It was about his outfit,” exclaimed John; “depend upon it it was not about Laura.”

And so the colloquy ended, and John walked down his own garden, opened the wicket that led to his gardener’s cottage, and saw Joseph idly picking out a weed here and there, while he watched the bees, some of whom, deluded by the sunshine, had come forth, and were feebly hanging about the opening of the hive.

“Joe,” said John, with perfect decision and directness, “I have a favour to ask of you.”

Joseph was startled at first; but as no more was said, he presently answered, “Well, sir, you and yours have done me so many, that I didn’t ought to hesitate about saying I’ll grant it, whatever it is.”

“If you should think of marrying before you go—-“

“Which I don’t, sir,” interrupted the young man rather hastily.

“Very good; then if you change your mind, I want your promise that you will immediately let me know.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joseph, as if the promise cost him nothing, and suggested nothing to his mind, “I will.”

“There,” thought John, as he turned away, “he does not know what he is about; but if she brings the thing on again, I believe he will keep faith with me, and a clandestine marriage I am determined shall not be.”

He then went into the town and found, to his surprise, that Brandon had already seen his father, and had told him that Dorothea Graham had engaged herself to him. John was very much pleased, but his father treated the matter with a degree of apathy which rather startled and disturbed him.

Old Augustus was in general deeply interested in a marriage; he had helped several people to marry, and whether he approved or disapproved of any one in particular, he was almost sure, when he had been lately told of it, to make some remarks on the sacredness of the institution, and on the advantages of an early marriage for young men.

He, however, said nothing, though Brandon was one of his chief favourites; but having just related the fact, took up the _Times_, and John opened his letters, one of them being from his son Johnny, written in a fully-formed and beautiful hand, which made its abrupt style and boyish vehemence the more observable.

“My Dearest Father,–It’s all right. Mr. —- took me to Harrow, and Dr. B. examined me, and he said–oh, he said a good deal about my Latin verses, and the books I’m _in_, but I can’t tell you it, because it seems so muffish. And, papa, I wish I might bring Crayshaw home for the Easter holidays; you very nearly promised I should; but I wanted to tell you what fun I and the other fellows had at the boat-race. You can hardly think how jolly it was. I suppose when I get into the great school I shall never see it. We ran down shouting and yelling after the boats. I thought I should never be happy again if Cambridge didn’t win. It was such a disgustingly sleety, blowy, snowy, windy, raspy, muddy day, as you never saw. And such crowds of fellows cheering and screeching out to the crews. Such a rout!

“‘The Lord Mayor lent the City P’lice, The cads ran down by scores and scores With shouting roughs, and scented muffs, While blue were flounces, frills, and gores. On swampy meads, in sleeted hush,
The swarms of London made a rush, And all the world was in the slush.’

“Etcetera. That’s part of Crayshaw’s last; it’s a parody of one of those American fogies. Dear father, you will let me come home, won’t you; because I do assure you I shall get in with the greatest ease, even if I’m not coached for a day more. A great many fellows here haven’t a tutor at all.–I remain, your affectionate son,

“A.J. Mortimer.

“P.S.–Will you tell Gladys that my three puppies, which she says are growing nicely, are not, on any account, to be given away; and will you say that Swan is not to drown them, or do anything with them, till I’ve chosen one, and then he may sell the others. And I hope my nails and screws and my tools have not been meddled with. The children are not to take my things. It often makes me miserable to think that they get my nails and my paddle when I’m gone.”

John Mortimer smiled, and felt rather inclined to let the boy come home, when, looking up, he observed that his father was dozing over the newspaper, and that he shivered.

Master Augustus John did not get an answer so soon as he had hoped for it, and when it came it was dated from a little, quiet place at the seaside, and let him know that his grandfather was very poorly, very much out of sorts, and that his father had felt uneasy about him. Johnny was informed that he must try to be happy, spending the Easter holidays at his tutor’s. His grandfather sent him a very handsome “tip,” and a letter written in such a shaky hand, that the boy was a good deal impressed, and locked it up in his desk, lest he should never have another.

CHAPTER XV.

THE AMERICAN GUEST.

“Shall we rouse the night-owl with a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver?”

In less than a week from the receipt of his son’s letter, John Mortimer wrote again, and gave the boy leave to come home, but on no account to bring young Crayshaw with him, if a journey was likely to do him harm.

Johnny accordingly set off instantly (the holidays having just begun), and, travelling all night, reached the paternal homestead by eight o’clock in the morning.

His father was away, but he was received with rapture by his brothers and sisters. His little brothers admired him with the humble reverence of small boys for big ones, and the girls delighted in his school-boy slang, and thought themselves honoured by his companionship.

Crayshaw was an American by birth, but his elder brother (under whose guardianship he was) had left him in England as his best chance of living to manhood, for he had very bad health, and the climate of his native place did not suit him.

Young Gifford Crayshaw had a general invitation to spend the holidays at Brandon’s house, for his brother and Brandon were intimate friends; but boys being dull alone, Johnny Mortimer and he contrived at these times to meet rather often, sometimes to play, sometimes to fight–even the latter is far better than being without companionship, more natural, and on the whole more cheerful.

“And I’m sure,” said Aunt Christie, when she heard he was coming, “I should never care about the mischief he leads the little ones into when he’s well, if he could breathe like other people when he’s ill; you may hear him half over the house when he has his asthma.”

Crayshaw came by the express train in the afternoon, and was met by the young Mortimers in the close carriage. He was nearly fifteen, and a strange contrast to Johnny, whose perfect health, ardent joyousness, and lumbering proportions never were so observable as beside the clear-cut face of the other, the slow gait, an expression of countenance at once audacious, keen, and sweet, together with that peculiar shadow under the eyelids which some people consider to betoken an early death.

Crayshaw was happily quite well that afternoon, and accordingly very noisy doings went on; Miss Crampton was away for her short Easter holiday, and Aunt Christie did not interfere if she could help it when Johnny was at home.

That night Master Augustus John Mortimer, his friend, and all the family were early asleep; not so the next. It was some time past one o’clock A.M. when John Mortimer and Brandon, who had been dining together at a neighbour’s house, one having left his father rather better, and the other having come home from the Isle of Wight, walked up towards the house deep in conversation, till John, lifting up his eyes, saw lights in the schoolroom windows. This deluded father calmly remarked that the children had forgotten to put the lamp out when they went to bed. Brandon thought he heard a sound uncommonly like infant revelry, but he said nothing, and the two proceeded into the closed house, and went softly up-stairs.

“Roast pork,” said Brandon, “if ever I smelt that article in my life!”

They opened the schoolroom door, and John beheld, to his extreme surprise, a table spread, his eldest son at the head of it, his twin daughters, those paragons of good behaviour, peeling potatoes, and the other children, all more or less dishevelled, sitting round, blushing and discomfited.

“My dears!” exclaimed John Mortimer, “this I never could have believed of you! One o’clock in the morning!”

Perfect silence. Brandon thought John would find it beneath his dignity to make a joke of this breach of discipline. He was rather vexed that he should have helped to discover it, and feeling a little _de trop_, he advanced to the top of the table. “John,” he said with a resigned air and with a melancholy cadence in his voice that greatly impressed the children.

“Come,” thought John as he paused, “they deserve a ‘wigging,’ but I don’t want to make a ‘Star-chamber matter’ of this. I wish he would not be so supernaturally serious.”

“John,” repeated Brandon, “on occasion of this unexpected hospitality, I feel called upon to make a speech.”

John sat down, wondering what would come next.

“John, ladies and gentlemen,” said Brandon, “when I look around me on these varied attractions, when I behold those raspberry turnovers of a flakiness and a puffiness so ethereal, that one might think the very eyes of the observer should drop lightly on them, lest that too appreciative glance should flatten them down–I say, ladies and gentlemen, when I smell that crackling, when I cast my eyes on those cinders in the gravy, I am irresistibly reminded of occasions when I myself, arrayed in a holland pinafore, have presided over like entertainments; and of one in particular when, being of tender age–of one occasion, I say, that is never to be forgotten, when, during the small hours of the night, I was hauled out of bed to assist in mixing hardbake, by one very dear to us all–who shall be nameless.”

What more he would have added will never be known, for with ringing laughter that spoke for the excellence of their lungs, the whole tableful of young Mortimers, with the exception of Johnnie, rose, and, as if by one impulse, fell upon their father.

“Hold hard,” he was heard to shout, “don’t smother me.” But he received a kissing and hugging of great severity; the elder ones who had understood Brandon’s speech, closing him in; the little ones, who only perceived to their delight that the occasion had become festive again, hovering round, and getting at him where they could. So that when they parted, and he was visible again, sitting radiant in the midst of them, his agreeable face was very red, and he was breathing fast and audibly. “I’ll pay you for this!” he exclaimed, when he observed, to his amusement, that Brandon’s serious look was now really genuine, as if he was afraid the experiment might be repeated on himself. “Johnnie, my boy, shake hands, I forgive you this once. And you may pass the bottle.” Johnnie, who knew himself to be the real offender, made haste to obey. “It’s not blacking, of course,” continued John, looking at the thick liquor with distrust.

“The betht black currant,” exclaimed his heir, “at thirteen-penth a bottle.”

“And where’s Cray?” exclaimed John, suddenly observing the absence of his young guest.

“He’s down in the kitchen, dishing up the pudding,” said Barbara blushing, and she darted out of the room, and presently returned, other footsteps following hers.

“Cray,” exclaimed John, as the boy seemed inclined to linger outside, “don’t stand there in the draught. And so it is not by your virtuous inclinations that you have hitherto been excluded from this festive scene?”

“No, sir,” said Crayshaw with farcical meekness of voice and air, “quite the contrary. It was that I’ve met with a serious accident. I’ve been run over.”

John looked aghast. “You surely have not been into the loose-box,” he said anxiously.

“Oh no, father, nothing of the sort,” said Barbara. “It was only that he was down in the kitchen on his knees, and two blackbeetles ran over his legs. You should never believe a word he says, father.”

“But that was the reason the pudding came to grief,” continued Crayshaw; “they were very large and fierce, and in my terror I let it fall, and it was squashed. When I saw their friends coming on to fall upon it, I was just about to cry, ‘Take it all, but spare my life!’ when Barbara came and rescued me. I hope,” he went on, yet more meekly, “I hope it was not an unholy self-love that prompted me to prefer my life to the pudding!”

The children laughed, as they generally did when Crayshaw spoke, but it was more at his manner than at his words. And now, peace being restored, everybody helped everybody else to the delicacies, John discreetly refraining from any inquiry as to whether this was the first midnight feast over which his son had presided, but he could not forbear to say, “I suppose your grandfather’s ‘tip’ is to blame for this?”

“If everybody was like the Grand,” remarked Crayshaw, “Tennyson never need have said–

“‘Vex not thou the schoolboy’s soul With thy shabby _tip_.'”

“Now, Cray,” said Brandon, “don’t you emulate Valentine’s abominable trick of quoting.”

“And I have often begged you two not to parody the Immortals,” said John. “The small fry you may make fun of, if you please, but let the great alone.”

“But he ithn’t dead,” reasoned Master Augustus John; “I don’t call any of thoth fellowth immortal till they’re dead.”

“It’s a very bad habit,” continued his father.

“And he’s made me almost as bad as himself,” observed Crayshaw in the softest and mildest of tones. “Miss Christie said this very morning that there was no bearing me, and I never did it till I knew him. I used to be so good, everybody loved me.”

John laughed, but was determined to say his say.

“You never can take real pleasure again in any poetry that you have mauled in that manner. Miss Crampton was seriously annoyed when she found that you had altered the girl’s songs, and made them ridiculous.”

The last time, in fact, that Johnnie and Crayshaw had been together, they had deprived themselves of their natural rest in order to carry out these changes; and the first time Miss Crampton gave a music lesson after their departure, she opened the book at one of their improved versions, which ran as follows:–

“Wink to me only with thy nose,
And I will sing through mine.”

Miss Crampton hated boyish vulgarity; she turned the page, but matters were no better. The two youths had next been at work on a song in which a muff of a man, who offers nothing particular in return, requests ‘Nancy’ to gang wi’ him, leaving her home, her dinner, her brooches, her best gowns, &c., behind, to walk through snow-drifts, blasts, and other perils by his side, and afterwards strew flowers on his clay. Desirous as it seemed to show that the young person was not so misguided as her silence has hitherto left the world to think, they had added a verse, which ran as follows:–

“‘Ah, wilt thou thus, for his loved sake, All manner of hardships dare to know?’ The fair one smiled whenas he spake,
And promptly answered, ‘No, sir; no,'”

“Cray,” said John Mortimer, observing the boy’s wan appearance, “how could you think of sitting up so late?”

“Why, the thupper wath on purpoth for him,” exclaimed Johnnie. “We gave it in hith honour, ath a mark of thympathy.”

“Because he was burnt out,” said Gladys. “Papa, did you know? his tutor’s house was burnt down, and the boys had to escape in the night.”

“But it wath a great lark,” observed Johnnie, “and he knowth he thought tho.”

“Yes,” said Crayshaw, folding his hands with farcical mock meekness, “but I saved hardly anything–nothing whatever, in fact, but my Yankee accent, and that only by taking it between my teeth.”

“There was not enough of it to be worth saving, my dear boy,” said Brandon.

Crayshaw’s face for once assumed a genuine expression, one of alarm. He was distinguished at school for the splendid Yankee dialect he could put on, as Johnnie was for his mastery of a powerful Devonshire lingo; but if scarcely a hint of his birthplace remained in his daily speech, and he had not noticed any change, there was surely danger lest this interesting accomplishment should be declining also.

“I am always imitating the talk I hear in the cottages,” he remarked; “I may have lost it so.”

“Perhaps, as Cray goes to so many places, it may get scattered about,” said little Bertram; but he was speedily checked by Johnnie, who observed with severity that they didn’t want any “thrimp thauth.”

“He mutht thimmer,” said Johnnie, “thath what he mutht do. He mutht be thrown into an iron pot, with a gallon of therry cobbler, and a pumpkin pie, and thome baked beanth, and a copy of the Biglow Paperth, and a handful of thalt, and they mutht all thimmer together till he geth properly flavoured again.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer if he was only dipped in?” asked the same “shrimp” who had spoken before.

As this was the second time he had taken this awful liberty, he would probably have been dismissed the assembly but for the presence of his father. As it was, Johnnie and Crayshaw both looked at him, not fiercely but steadily, whereupon the little fellow with deep blushes slid gently from his chair under the table.

A few days after this midnight repast, Emily, knowing that John Mortimer was away a good deal, and having a perfectly gratuitous notion that his children must be dull in consequence, got Valentine to drive her over one morning to invite them to spend a day at Brandon’s house.

A great noise of shouting, drumming on battledores, and blowing through discordant horns, let them know, as they came up the lane, that the community was in a state of high activity; and when they reached the garden gate they were just in time to see the whole family vanish round a corner, running at full speed after a donkey on which Johnnie was riding.

The visitors drove inside the gate, and waited five minutes, when the donkey, having made the circuit of the premises, came galloping up, the whole tribe of young Mortimers after him. They received Emily with loving cordiality, and accounted for the violent exercise they had been taking by the declaration that this donkey never would go at all, unless he heard a great noise and clatter at his heels.

“So that if Johnnie wanted to go far, as far as to London,” observed one of the panting family, “it would be awkward, wouldn’t it?”

“And he’s only a second-hand donkey, either,” exclaimed little Janie in deep disparagement of the beast; “father bought him of the blacksmith.”

“But isn’t it good fun to see him go so fast?” cried another. “Would you like to see our donkey do it again?”

“And see him ‘witch the world with noble assmanship,” said Valentine.

Whereupon a voice above said rather faintly. “Hear, hear!” and Crayshaw appeared leaning out of a first-floor window, the pathetic shadow more than commonly evident in his eyes, in spite of a mischievous smile. He had but lately recovered from a rheumatic fever, and was further held down by frequent attacks of asthma. Yet the moment one of these went off, the elastic spirits of boyhood enabled him to fling it into the background of his thoughts, and having rested awhile, as he was then doing, he became, according to the account Gladys gave of him at that moment, “just like other boys, only ten times more so!”

Emily now alighted, and as they closed about her and hemmed her in, donkey and all, she felt inclined to move her elbows gently, as she had sometimes seen John do, in order to clear a little space about him. “Why does not Cray come down, too?” she asked.

“I think he has had enough of the beast,” said Barbara, “for yesterday he was trying to make him jump; but the donkey and Cray could not agree about it. He would not jump, and at last he pitched Cray over his head.”

“Odd,” said Valentine; “that seems a double contradiction to the proverb that ‘great wits jump.'” Valentine loved to move off the scene, leaving a joke with his company. He now drove away, and Johnnie informed Emily that he had already been hard at work that morning.

“I’ve a right to enjoy mythelf after it,” he added, looking round in a patronising manner, “and I have. I’ve not had a better lark, in fact, since Grand was a little boy.”

By these kind, though preposterous words, the assembly was stimulated to action. The frightful clatter, drumming, and blowing of horns began again, and the donkey set off with all his might, the Mortimers after him. When he returned, little Bertram was seated on his back. “Johnnie and Cray have something very particular to do,” she was informed with gravity.

“For their holiday task?”

“Oh no, for that lovely electrifying machine of cousin Val’s. Cray is always writing verses; he is going to be a poet. Johnnie was saying last week that it was not at all hard to turn poetry into Latin, and Val said he should have the machine if he could translate some that Cray wrote the other day. Do you think the Romans had any buttons and buttonholes?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because there are buttons in one of the poems. Cray says it is a tribute–a tribute to this donkey that father has, just given us. He was inspired to write it when he saw him hanging his head over the yard gate.”

Thereupon the verses, copied in a large childish hand, were produced and read aloud:–

A TRIBUTE.

The jackass brayed;
And all his passionate dream was in that sound Which, to the stables round
And other tenements, told of packs that weighed On his brown haunches; also that, alas! His true heart sighed for Jenny, that fair ass Who backward still and forward paced
With panniers and the curate’s children graced. Then, when she took no heed, but turned aside Her head, he shook his ears
As much as to say “Great are–as these–my fears.” And while I wept to think how love that preyed On the deep heart not worth a button seemed To her for whom he dreamed;
And while the red sun stained the welkin wide, And summer lightnings on the horizon played, Again the jackass brayed.

“And here’s the other,” said Gladys. “Johnnie says, it would be much the easier to do, only he is doubtful about the ‘choker.'”

THE SCHOOLBOY TO HIS DRESS SUIT.

Nice is broiled salmon, whitebait’s also nice With bread and butter served, no shaving thinner. _Entrees_ are good; but what is even ice– Cream ice–to him that’s made to dress for dinner? Oh my dress boots, my studs, and my white tie Termed choker (emblem of this heart’s pure aim), Why are good things to eat your meed? Oh why Must swallow-tails be donned for tasting game? The deep heart questions vainly,–not for ease Or joy were such invented;–but this know, I’d rather dine off hunks of bread and cheese Than feast in state rigged out in my dress clo’.

G.C.

Emily, after duly admiring these verses, gave her invitation, and it was accepted with delight. Nothing, they said, could be more convenient. Father had told them how Mr. Brandon was having the long wing of the house pulled down, the part where cousin Val’s room used to be; so he had been obliged to turn out his nests, and his magic lantern, and many other things that he had when he was a little boy.

“And he says we shall inherit them.”

“And when father saw him sitting on a heap of bricks among his things, he says it put him in mind of Marius on the ruins of Carthage.”

“So now we can fetch them all away.”

Emily then departed, after stipulating that the two little ones, her favourites, should come also. “Darlings!” she exclaimed, when she saw their stout little legs so actively running to ask Miss Christie’s leave. “Will my boy ever look at me with such clear earnest eyes? Shall I ever see such a lovely flush on his face, or hear such joyous laughter from him?”

Time was to answer this question for her, and a very momentous month for the whole family began its course. Laura, writing from Paris to Liz, made it evident to those who knew anything of the matter, that Mrs. Melcombe, as she thought, had carried her out of harm’s way; and it is a good thing Laura did not know with what perfect composure and ambitious hope Joseph made his preparations for the voyage. The sudden change of circumstances and occupation, and the new language he had to learn, woke him thoroughly from his dream, and though it had been for some long time both deep and strong, yet it was to him now as other dreams “when one awaketh;” and Laura herself, now that she had been brought face to face, not with her lover, but with facts, was much more reasonable than before. Brandon had said to her pointedly, in the presence of her sister-in-law, “If you and this young man had decided to marry, no law, human or divine, could have forbidden it.” But at the same time Amelia had said, “Laura, you know very well that though you love to make romances about him, you would not give up one of the comforts of life for his sake.”

Laura, in fact, had scarcely believed in the young man’s love till she had been informed that it was over. She longed to be sought more than she cared to be won; it soothed and comforted what had been a painful sense of disadvantage to know that one man at least had sighed for her in vain. He would not have been a desirable husband, but as a former lover she could feign him what she pleased, and while, under new and advantageous circumstances, he became more and more like what she feigned, it was not surprising that in the end she forgot her feigning, and found her feet entangled for good and all in the toils she herself had spread for them.

In the meantime Johnnie and Crayshaw, together with the younger Mortimers, did much as they liked, till Harrow school reopened, when the two boys returned, departing a few hours earlier than was necessary that they might avoid Miss Crampton, a functionary whom Johnny held in great abhorrence.

At the same period Grand suddenly rallied, and, becoming as well as ever, his son, who had made many journeys backwards and forwards to see him, brought him home, buying at the railway station, as he stepped into his father’s carriage, the _Times_ and the _Wigfield Advertiser_, and _True Blue_, in each of which he saw a piece of news that concerned himself, though it was told with a difference.

In the _Times_ was the marriage of Giles Brandon, Esq., &c., to Dorothea, elder daughter of Edward Graham, Esq.; and in the local paper, with an introduction in the true fustian style of mock concealment, came the same announcement, followed by a sufficiently droll and malicious account of the terrible inconvenience another member of this family had suffered a short time since by being snowed up, in which state he still continued, as snow in that part of the world had forgotten how to melt.

A good deal that was likely to mortify Valentine followed this, but it was no more than he deserved.

John laughed. “Well, Giles is a dear fellow,” he said, throwing down the paper. “I am pleased at his marriage, and they must submit to be laughed at like other people.”

CHAPTER XVI.

WEARING THE WILLOW.

“My Lord Sebastian,
The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness And time to speak it in; you rub the sore When you should bring the plaster.”

_The Tempest._

When John Mortimer reached the banking-house next morning, he found Valentine waiting for him in his private sitting-room.

“I thought my uncle would hardly be coming so early, John,” he said, “and that perhaps you would spare me a few minutes to talk things over.”

“To be sure,” said John, and looking more directly at Valentine, he noticed an air of depression and gloom which seemed rather too deep to be laid to the account of the _True Blue_.

He was stooping as he sat, and slightly swinging his hat by the brim between his knees. He had reddened at first, with a sullen and half-defiant expression, but this soon faded, and, biting his lips, he brought himself with evident effort to say–

“Well, John, I’ve done for myself, you see; Giles has married her. Serves me right, quite right. I’ve nothing to say against it.”

“No, I devoutly hope you have not,” exclaimed John, to whom the unlucky situation became evident in an instant.

“Grand always has done me the justice to take my part as regards my conduct about this hateful second engagement. He always knew that I would have married poor Lucy if they would have let me–married her and made the best of my frightful, shameful mistake. But as you know, Mrs. Nelson, Lucy’s mother, made me return her letters a month ago, and said it must be broken off, unless I would let it go dragging on and on for two years at least, and that was impossible, you know, John, because–because, I so soon found out what I’d done.”

“Wait a minute, my dear fellow,” John interrupted hastily, “you have said nothing yet but what expresses very natural feelings. I remark, in reply, that your regret at what you have long seen to be unworthy conduct need no longer disturb you on the lady’s account, she having now married somebody else.”

“Yes,” said Valentine, sighing restlessly.

“And,” John went on, looking intently at him, “on your own account I think you need not at all regret that you had no chance of going and humbly offering yourself to her again, for I feel certain that she would have considered it insulting her to suppose she could possibly overlook such a slight. Let me speak plainly, and say that she could have regarded such a thing in no other light.”

Then, giving him time to think over these words, which evidently impressed him, John presently went on, “It would be ridiculous, however, now, for Dorothea to resent your former conduct, or St. George either. Of course they will be quite friendly towards you, and you may depend upon it that all this will very soon appear as natural as possible; you’ll soon forget your former relation towards your brother’s wife; in fact you must.”

Valentine was silent awhile, but when he did speak he said, “You feel sure, then, that she would have thought such a thing an insult?” He meant, you feel sure, then, that I should have had no chance even if my brother had not come forward.

“Perfectly sure,” answered John with confidence. “That was a step which, from the hour you made it, you never could have retraced.”

Here there was another silence; then–

“Well, John, if you think so,” said the poor fellow–“this was rather a sudden blow to me, though.”

John pitied him; he had made a great fool of himself, and he was smarting for it keenly. His handsome young face was very pale, but John was helping him to recollect his better self, and he knew it. “I shall not allude to this any more,” he continued.

“I’m very glad to hear you say so,” said John.

“I came partly to say–to tell you that now I am better, quite well, in fact, I cannot live at home any longer. At home! Well, I meant in St. George’s house, any longer.”

The additional knowledge John had that minute acquired of the state of Valentine’s feeling, or what he supposed himself to feel, gave more than usual confidence and cordiality to his answer.

“Of course not. You will be considering now what you mean to do, and my father and I must help you. In the first place there is that two thousand pounds; you have never had a shilling of it yet. My father was speaking of that yesterday.”

“Oh,” answered Valentine, with evident relief, and with rather a bitter smile, “I thought he proposed to give me that as a wedding present, and if so, goodness knows I never expect to touch a farthing of it.”

“That’s as hereafter may be,” said John, leading him away from the dangerous subject. Valentine began every sentence with a restless sigh.

“I never chose to mention it,” he remarked. “I had no right to consider it as anything else, nor did I.”

“He does not regard it in any such light,” said John. “He had left it to you in his will, but decided afterwards to give it now. You know he talks of his death, dear old man, as composedly as of to-morrow morning. He was reminding me of this money the other day when he was unwell, and saying that, married or unmarried, you should have it made over to you.”

“I’m very deeply, deeply obliged to him,” said Valentine, with a fervour that was almost emotion. “It seems, John, as if that would help me,–might get me out of the scrape, for I really did not know where to turn. I’ve got nothing to do, and had nothing to live on, and I’m two and twenty.”

“Yes.”

“I do feel as if I was altogether in such an ignominious position.”

As John quite agreed with him in this view of his position, he remained silent.

Valentine went on, “First, my going to Cambridge came to nothing on account of my health. Then a month ago, as I didn’t want to go and live out in New Zealand by myself, couldn’t in fact, the New Zealand place was transferred to Liz, and she and Dick are to go to it, Giles saying that he would give me a thousand pounds instead of it. I shall not take that, of course.”

“Because he will want his income for himself,” John interrupted.

Valentine proceeding, “And now since I left off learning to farm,–for that’s no use here,–I’ve got nothing on earth to do.”

“Have you thought of anything yet?”

“Yes.”

“Well, out with it.”

“John,” remarked Valentine, as the shadow of a smile flitted across John’s face, “you always seem to me to know what a fellow is thinking of! Perhaps you would not like such a thing,–wouldn’t have it?”

John observed that he was getting a little less gloomy as he proceeded.

“But whether or not, that two thousand pounds will help me to some career, certainly, and entirely save me from what I could not bear to think of, _her_ knowing that I was dependent on Giles, and despising me for it.”

“Pooh,” exclaimed John, a little chafed at his talking in this way, “what is St. George’s wife likely to know, or to care, as to how her brother-in-law derives his income? But I quite agree with you that you have no business to be dependent on Giles; he has done a great deal for his sisters he should now have his income for himself.”

“Yes,” said Valentine.

“You have always been a wonderfully united family,” observed John pointedly; “there is every reason why that state of things should continue.”

“Yes,” repeated Valentine, receiving the covert lecture resignedly.

“And there is no earthly end, good or bad, to be served,” continued John, “by the showing of irritation or gloom on your part, because your brother has chosen to take for himself what you had previously and with all deliberation thrown away.”

“I suppose not, John,” said Valentine quite humbly.

“Then what can you be thinking of?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have not talked to any one as you have done to me this morning?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Well, then, decide while the game is in your own hand that you never will.”

So far from being irritated or sulky at the wigging that John was bestowing on him, Valentine was decidedly the better for it. The colour returned to his face, he sat upright in his chair, and then he got up and stood on the rug, as if John’s energy had roused him, and opened his eyes also, to his true position.

“You don’t want to cover yourself with ridicule, do you?” continued John, seeing his advantage.

“Why, even if you cared to take neither reason, nor duty, nor honour into the question, surely the only way to save your own dignity from utter extinction is to be, or at least seem to be, quite indifferent as to what the lady may have chosen to do, but very glad that your brother should have taken a step which makes it only fair to you that he and his wife should forget your former conduct.”

“John,” said Valentine, “I acknowledge that you are right.”

John had spoken quite as much, indeed more, in Brandon’s interest than in Valentine’s. The manner in which the elder had suffered the younger to make himself agreeable and engage himself to Dorothea Graham, and how, when he believed she loved him, he had made it possible for them to marry, were partly known to him and partly surmised. And now it seemed in mockery of everything that was decent, becoming, and fair that the one who had forsaken her should represent himself as having waked, after a short delusion, and discovered that he loved her still, letting his brother know this, and perhaps all the world. Such would be a painful and humiliating position also for the bride. It might even affect the happiness of the newly-married pair; but John did not wish to hint at these graver views of the subject; he was afraid to give them too much importance, and he confidently reckoned on Valentine’s volatile disposition to stand his friend, and soon enable him to get over his attachment. All that seemed wanting was some degree of present discretion.

“John, I acknowledge that you are right,” repeated Valentine, after an interval of thought.

“You acknowledge–now we have probed this subject and got to the bottom of it–that it demands of you absolute silence, and at first some discretion?”

“Yes; that is settled.”

“You mean to take my view?”

“Yes, I do.”

As he stood some time lost in thought, John let him alone and began to write, till, thinking he had pondered enough, he looked up and alluded to the business Valentine had come about.

“You may as well tell it me, unless you want to take my father into your council also: he will be here soon.”

“No; I thought it would be more right if I spoke to you first, John, before my uncle heard of it,” said Valentine.

“Because it is likely to concern me longer?” asked John.

“Yes; you see what I mean; I should like, if uncle and you would let me, to go into the bank; I mean as a clerk–nothing more, of course.”

“I should want some time to consider that matter,” said John. “I was half afraid you would propose this, Val. It’s so like you to take the easiest thing that offers.”

“Is it on my account or on your own that you shall take time?”

“On both. So far as you are concerned, it is no career to be a banker’s clerk.”

“No; but, John, though I hardly ever think of it, I cannot always forget that there is only one life between me and Melcombe.”

“Very true,” said John coolly; “but if it is ill waiting for a dead man’s shoes, what must it be waiting for a dead child’s shoes?”

“I do not even wish or care to be ever more than a clerk,” said Valentine; “but that, I think, would fill up my time pleasantly.”

“Between this and what?”

“Between this and the time when I shall have finally decided what I will do. I think eventually I shall go abroad.”

John knew by this time that he would very gladly not have Valentine with him, or rather under him; but an almost unfailing instinct, where his father was concerned, assured him that the old man _would_ like it.

“Shall I speak to my father about it for you?” he said.

“No, John, by no means, if you do not like it. I would not be so unfair as let him have a hint of it till you have taken the time you said you wanted.”

“All right,” said John; “but where, in case you became a clerk here, do you propose to live?”

“Dick A’Court lived in lodgings for years,” said Valentine, “so does John A’Court now, over the pastrycook’s in the High Street.”

“And you think you could live over the shoemaker’s?”

“Why not?”

“I have often met Dick meekly carrying home small parcels of grocery for himself. I should like to catch you doing anything of the sort!”

“I believe I can do anything now I have learned to leave off quoting. I used to be always doing it, and to please Dorothea I have quite given it up.”

“Well,” said John, “let that pass.”

He knew as well as possible what would be his father’s wish, and he meant to let him gratify it. He was a good son, and, as he had everything completely in his own power, he may be said to have been very indulgent to his father, but the old man did not know it any more than he did.

Mr. Augustus Mortimer had a fine house, handsomely appointed and furnished. From time to time, as his son’s family had increased, he had added accommodation. There was an obvious nursery; there was an evident school-room, perfectly ready for the son, and only waiting, he often thought, till it should be said to his father, “Come up higher.”

It was one of John’s theories that there should be a certain homely simplicity in the dress, food, and general surroundings of youthful humanity; that it should not have to walk habitually on carpets so rich that little dusty feet must needs do damage, and appear intruders; nor be made to feel all day that somebody was disturbed if somebody else was making himself happy according to his lights, and in his own fashion.

But of late Mr. Augustus Mortimer had begun to show a degree of infirmity which sometimes made his son uncomfortable that he should have to live alone. To bring those joyous urchins and little, laughing, dancing, playful girls into his house was not to be thought of. What was wanted was some young relative to live with him, who would drive him into the town and home again, dine with him, live in his presence, and make his house cheerful. In short, as John thought the matter over, he perceived that it would be a very good thing for his father to have Valentine as an inmate, and that it would be everything to Valentine to be with his father.

People always seemed to manage comfortable homes for Valentine, and make good arrangements for him, as fast as he brought previous ones to nought.

Very few sons like to bring other people into their fathers’ houses, specially in the old age of the latter; but John Mortimer was not only confident of his own supreme influence, but he was more than commonly attached to his father, and had long been made to feel that on his own insight and forethought depended almost all that gave the old man pleasure.

His father seldom disturbed any existing arrangements, though he often found comfort from their being altered for him; so John decided to propose to him to have his brother’s son to live with him. In a few days, therefore, he wrote to Valentine that he had made up his mind, and would speak to his father for him, which he did, and saw that the nephew’s wish gave decided pleasure; but when he made his other proposal he was quite surprised (well as he knew his father) at the gladness it excited, at those thanks to himself for having thought of such a thing, and at certain little half-expressed hints which seemed intended to meet and answer any future thoughts his son might entertain as to Valentine’s obtaining more influence than he would approve. But John was seldom surprised by an after-thought; he was almost always happy enough to have done his thinking beforehand.

He was in the act of writing a letter to Valentine the next morning at his own house, and was there laying the whole plan before him, when he saw him driving rapidly up to the door in the little pony chaise, now the only carriage kept at Brandon’s house. He sprang out as if in urgent haste, and burst into the room in a great hurry.

“John,” he exclaimed, “can you lend me your phaeton, or give me a mount as far as the junction? Fred Walker has had one of his attacks, and Emily is in a terrible fright. She wants another opinion: she wishes Dr. Limpsey to be fetched, and she wants Grand to come to her.”

This last desire, mentioned as the two hurried together to the stable, showed John that Emily apprehended danger.

Emily’s joyous and impassioned nature, though she lived safely, as it were, in the middle of her own sweet world–saw the best of it, made the best of it, and coloured it all, earth and sky, with her tender hopefulness–was often conscious of something yet to come, ready and expectant of _the rest of it_. The rest of life, she meant; the rest of sorrow, love, and feeling.

She had a soul full of unused treasures of emotion, and pure, clear depths of passion that as yet slumbered unstirred. If her heart was a lute, its highest and lowest chords had never been sounded hitherto. This also she was aware of, and she knew what their music would be like when it came.

She had been in her girlhood the chief idol of many hearts; but joyous, straightforward, and full of childlike sweetness, she had looked on all her adorers in such an impartially careless fashion, that not one of them could complain. Then, having confided to John Mortimer’s wife that she could get up no enthusiasm for any of them, and thought there could be none of that commodity in her nature, she had at last consented, on great persuasion, to take the man who had loved her all her life, “because he wouldn’t go away, and she didn’t know what else to do with him; he was such a devoted little fellow, too, and she liked him so much better than either of his brothers!”

So they were married; Captain Walker was excessively proud and happy in his wife, and Mrs. Walker was as joyous and sweet as ever. She had satisfied the kindly pity which for a long while had made her very uncomfortable on his account; and, O happy circumstance! she became in course of time the mother of the most attractive, wonderful, and interesting child ever born. In the eyes, however, of the invidious world, he was uncommonly like his plain sickly father, and not, with that exception, at all distinguished from other children.

John made haste to send Valentine off to the junction, undertook himself to drive his father over to see Emily, and gathered from the short account Valentine gave whilst the horse was put too, that Fred Walker had been taken ill during the night with a fainting fit. He had come from India for his year’s leave in a very poor state of health, and with apprehended heart disease. Only ten days previously Emily had persuaded him that it would be well to go to London for advice. But a fainting fit had taken place, and the medical man called in had forbidden this journey for the present. He had appeared to recover, so that there seemed to be no more ground for uneasiness than usual; but this second faintness had lasted long enough to terrify all those about him.

Grand was very fond of his late brother’s stepdaughter; she had always been his favourite, partly on account of her confiding ease and liking for him, partly because of the fervent religiousness that she had shown from a child.

The most joyous and gladsome natures are often most keenly alive to impressions of reverence, and wonder, and awe. Emily’s mind longed and craved to annex itself to all things fervent, deep, and real. As she walked on the common grass, she thought the better of it because the feet of Christ had trodden it also. There were things which she–as the angels–“desired to look into;” but she wanted also to do the right thing, and to love the doing of it.

With all this half Methodistic fervour, and longing to lie close at the very heart of Christianity, she had by nature a strange fearlessness; her religion, which was full of impassioned loyalty, and her faith, which seemed to fold her in, had elements in them of curiosity and awed expectation, which made death itself appear something grand and happy, quite irrespective of a simply religious reason. It would show her “the rest of it.” She could not do long without it; and often in her most joyous hours she felt that the crown of life was death’s most grand hereafter.

CHAPTER XVII.

AN EASY DISMISSAL.

“Admired Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration! worth What’s dearest to the world.”

_The Tempest._

“Well, father, it’s too true!”

“You don’t say so?”

“Yes; he died, Dr. Mainby’s housekeeper says, at five o’clock this morning. The doctor was there all night, and he’s now come home, and gone to bed.”

“One of the most unfortunate occurrences I ever heard of. Well, that that is, is–and can’t be helped. I’d have given something (over and above the ten-and-sixpence) to have had it otherwise; but I ‘spose, Jemmy, I ‘spose we understand the claims of decency and humanity.” It was the editor of the _True Blue_ who said this.

“I ‘spose we do,” answered the son sturdily, though sulkily; “but that’s the very best skit that Blank Blank ever did for us.”

“Blank Blank” was the signature under which various satirical verses appeared in the _True Blue_.

“Paid for, too–ten-and-six. Well, here goes, Jemmy.” He took a paper from his desk, read it over with a half smile. “One or two of the jokes in it will keep,” he observed; then, when his son nodded assent, he folded it up and threw it in the fire. This was a righteous action. He never got any thanks for doing it; also a certain severity that he was inclined to feel against the deceased for dying just then, he quickly turned (from a sense of justice) towards the living members of his family, and from them to their party, the “pinks” in general. Then he began to moralise. “Captain Walker–and so he’s dead–died at five o’clock this morning. It’s very sudden. Why Mrs. Walker was driving him through the town three days ago.”

“Yes,” answered the son; “but when a man has heart complaint, you never know where you are with him.”

A good many people in Wigfield and round it discussed that death during the day; but few, on the whole, in a kindlier spirit than had been displayed by the editor of the opposition paper. Mrs. A’Court, wife of the vicar, and mother of Dick A’Court, remarked that she was the last person to say anything unkind, but she did value consistency.

“Everybody knows that my Dick is a high churchman; they sent for him to administer the holy communion, and he found old Mr. Mortimer there, a layman, who is almost, I consider, a Methodist, he’s so low church; and poor Captain Walker was getting him to pray extempore by his bed. Even afterward he wouldn’t let him out of his sight. And Dick never remonstrated. Now, that is not what I could have hoped of my son; but when I told him so, he was very much hurt, said the old man was a saint, and he wouldn’t interfere. ‘Well, my dear,’ I said, ‘you must do as you please; but remember that your mother values consistency.'”

When Mrs. Melcombe, who, with her son and Laura, was still at Paris, heard of it, she also made a characteristic remark. “Dear me, how sad!” she exclaimed; “and there will be that pretty bride, Mrs. Brandon, in mourning for months, till all her wedding dresses, in fact, are out of fashion.”

Mrs. Melcombe had left Melcombe while it was at its loveliest, all the hawthorns in flower, the peonies and lilies of the valley. She chose first to go to Paris, and then when Peter did not seem to grow, was thin and pale, she decided–since he never seemed so well as when he had no lessons to do–that she would let him accompany them on their tour.

Melcombe was therefore shut up again; and the pictures of Daniel Mortimer and the young lieutenant, his uncle, remained all the summer in the dark. But Wigfield House was no sooner opened after Captain Walker’s funeral than back came the painters, cleaners, and upholsterers, to every part of it; and the whole place, including the garden, was set in order for the bride.

Emily was not able to have any of the rest and seclusion she so much needed; but almost immediately took her one child and went to stay with her late husband’s father till she could decide where to live.

Love that has been received affects the heart which has lost it quite differently from a loss where the love has been bestowed. The remembrance of it warms the heart towards the dear lost donor; but if the recollection of life spent together is without remorse, if, as in Emily’s case, the dead man has been wedded as a tribute to his acknowledged love, and if he has not only been allowed to bestow his love in peace without seeing any fault or failing that could give him one twinge of jealousy–if he has been considered, and liked thoroughly, and, in easy affectionate companionship, his wife has walked beside him, delighting him, and pleased to do so–then, when he is gone, comes, as the troubled heart calms itself after the alarms of death and parting, that one, only kind of sorrow which can ever be called with truth “the luxury of grief.”

In her mourning weeds, when she reached Fred’s father’s house, Emily loved to sit with her boy on her lap, and indulge in passionate tears, thinking over how fond poor Fred had been, and how proud of her. There was no sting in her grief, no compunction, for she knew perfectly well how happy she had made him; and there was not the anguish, of personal loss, and want, and bereavement.

She looked pale when she reached Mr. Walker’s house, but not worn. She liked to tell him the details of his son’s short illness; and the affectionate, irascible old man not only liked to hear them, but derived pleasure from seeing this fine young woman, this interesting widow, sitting mourning for his son. So he made much of her, and pushed her sister Louisa at once into the background for her sake.

The sisters having married twin brothers, Mr. Walker’s elder sons, neither had looked on himself as heir to the exclusion of the other; but Emily’s pale morsel of a child was at once made more important than his father had ever been. Louisa, staying also with her husband in the house, was only the expectant mother of a grandson for him; and the rich old man now began almost immediately to talk of how he should bring up Emily’s boy, and what he should do for him–taking for granted, from the first, that his favourite daughter-in-law was to live with him and keep his house.

Louisa took this change in Mr. Walker very wisely and sweetly–did not even resent it, when, in the presence of his living son, he would aggravate himself into lamentations over the dead one, as if in him he had lost his all.

Sometimes he wondered a little himself at this quiescence–at the slight impression he seemed to make on his son, whom he had fully intended to rouse to remonstrance about it–at the tender way in which the young wife ministered to her sister, and at the great change for the worse that he soon began to observe in Emily’s appearance.

Nobody liked to tell him the cause, and he would not see it; even when it became an acknowledged fact, which every one else talked of, that the little one was ill, he resolutely refused to see it; said the weather was against a child born in India–blamed the east wind. Even when the family doctor tried to let him know that the child was not likely to be long for this world, he was angry, with all the unreasonable volubility of a man who thinks others are deceiving him, rather than grieved for the peril of the little life and the anguish of the mother’s heart.

Now came indeed “the rest of it.” What a rending away of heart and life it seemed to let go the object of this absorbing, satisfying love! Now she was to lose, where the love had been bestowed; and she felt as if death itself was in the bitter cup.

It was not till the child was actually passing away, after little more than a fortnight’s illness, that his grandfather could be brought to believe in his danger. He had been heaping promises of what he would do for him on the mother, as if to raise her courage. With kindly wrong-headed obstinacy he had collected and detailed to her accounts of how ill other children had been and had recovered, had been getting fresh medical opinions, and proposing to try new remedies; but no sooner was all over, and the afflicted mother was led from her dead child by his son, than he tormented himself and the doctors by demanding why he had been kept in the dark so long, why he had not been allowed to try change of air, why, if the symptoms showed mortal disease from the first, he had been allowed to set his heart on the child as he had done. No one now had anything to say to Emily. She had only been a widow a month, and the first loss had had no bitterness in it, though she had sorrowed with the tender affection of a loyal heart. The death of her child was almost the loss of all.

Valentine in the meantime had taken his sister Liz to a little quiet place; there, as her marriage could not be put off, and the ship was decided on in which they were to sail for New Zealand, he acted the part of father, and gave her away at the quietest wedding possible, seeing her off afterwards, and returning to take up his abode in his uncle’s house, about three weeks after the death of Emily’s little child. Not one of the late inhabitants had been left in his old home excepting Mrs. Henfrey, who remained to receive the bride, and was still there, though the newly-married pair had been home a week. Valentine had found ample time to consider how he should behave to Dorothea, Mrs. Brandon. He had also become accustomed to the thought of her being out of his reach, and the little excitement of wonder as to how they should meet was not altogether displeasing to him. “Giles will be inclined, no doubt, to be rather jealous of me,” was his thought; “I shall be a bad fellow if I don’t take care to show him that there is no need for it. D. must do the same. Of course she will. Sweet D.! Well, it can’t be helped now.”

It was natural enough that he should cogitate over the best way of managing his first meeting with them; but he had not been an hour in his uncle’s house before he found that Grand was shortly going to give a great dinner party for the bride mainly consisting of relatives and very old friends. This, it was evident, would be the most natural time for him to present himself.

Valentine loved comfort and luxury, and finding himself established quite as if he had been a younger son in the house–a horse kept for him to ride, and a small sitting-room set aside in which he could see his friends–he experienced a glow of pleasure at first, and he soon perceived that his presence was a real pleasure to his old uncle; so, settling himself with characteristic ease in his place, he felt hourly more and more content with his new home.

It was not till he came down into the drawing-room before dinner on the day of the party that he began to feel excited and agitated. A good many of the guests were already present, he went up to one and to another, and then advanced to speak to Miss Christie, who was arrayed in a wonderful green gown, bought new for the occasion.

“Mr. and Mrs. Brandon,” sounded clearly all down the long room, and he turned slowly and saw them. For one instant they appeared to be standing quite still, and so he often saw them side by side in his thoughts ever after. The bride looked serenely sweet, a delicate blush tinging her face, which was almost of infantine fairness and innocence; then old Grand’s white head came in the way as he advanced to meet her and take her hand, bowing low with old-fashioned formality and courtesy. Several other people followed and claimed her acquaintance, so that they were closed in for the moment. Then he felt that now was the time for him to come forward, which he did, and as the others parted again to let Grand take her to a seat, they met face to face.

“Ah, Valentine,” she said, so quietly, with such an unexcited air; she gave him her hand for a moment, and it was over. Then he shook hands with his brother, their eyes met, and though both tried hard to be grave, neither could forbear to smile furtively; but Giles was much the more embarrassed of the two.

During dinner, though Valentine talked and laughed, he could not help stealing a minute now and then to gaze at the bride, till John, darting a sudden look at him, brought him to his senses; but he cogitated about her, though he did not repeat the offence. “Is it lilac, or grey, or what, that she has on? That pale stuff must be satin, for it shines. Oh, meant for mourning perhaps. How wonderfully silent Giles is! How quiet they both are!”

This observation he made to himself several times during the evening, catching the words of one and the other whatever part of the room he was in, almost as distinctly as they did themselves; but he only looked once at Dorothea, when something made him feel or think that she had drawn her glove off. His eyes wandered then to her hand. Yes, it was so–there was the wedding ring.

With what difficulty, with what disgrace he had contrived to escape from marrying this young woman! His eyes ‘wandered round the room. Just so she would have looked, and every one else would have looked, if this wedding dinner had been made for _his_ bride, but he would not have been sitting up in the corner with three girls about him, laughing and making laugh. No, and he would not have stood rather remote from her, as Giles did. He thought he would have been proudly at her side. Oh, how could he have been such a fool? how could he? how could he?

“She would have loved me just as well, just so she would have lifted up her face, as she does now, and turned towards me.”–No! The bride and her husband looked at one another for an instant, and in one beat of the heart he knew not only that no such look had ever been in her eyes for him, but he felt before he had time to reason his conviction down, that in all likelihood there never would have been. Then, when he found that Dorothea seemed scarcely aware of his presence, he determined to return the compliment, got excited, and was the life and soul of the younger part of the company. So that when the guests dispersed, many were the remarks they made about it.

“Well, young Mortimer need not have been quite so determined to show his brother how delighted he was not to be standing in his shoes.” “Do you think Brandon married her out of pity?” “She is a sweet young creature. I never saw newly-married people take so little notice of one another. It must have been a trial to her to meet young Mortimer again, for no doubt she was attached to him.”

A quarter of an hour after the bride had taken her leave, and when all the other guests were gone, Valentine went into the hall, feeling very angry with himself for having forgotten that, as he was now a member of her host’s family, he might with propriety have seen Dorothea into the carriage. “This,” he thought, “shall not occur again.”

The hall doors were open, servants stood about as if waiting still. He saw a man’s figure. Some one, beyond the stream of lamplight which came from the house, stood on the gravel, where through a window he could command a view of the staircase.

It was little past eleven, the moon was up, and as the longest day was at hand, twilight was hardly over, and only one star here and there hung out of the heavens.

“Why, that is Giles,” thought Valentine. “Strange! he cannot have sent Dorothea home alone, surely.”

Giles approached the steps, and Valentine, following the direction of his eyes, saw a slender figure descending the stairs.

Dorothea! She was divested now of the shimmering satin and all her bridal splendour. How sweet and girlish she looked in this more simple array! Evidently they were going to walk home through the woods and lanes, see glow-worms and smell the hedge roses. For an instant Valentine was on the point of proposing to accompany them part of the way, but recollected himself just in time to withdraw into the shadow made by a stand of greenhouse plants, and from thence see Giles come up the steps, take the delicate ungloved hand and lay it on his arm, while the hall doors were closed behind them.

Adam and Eve were returning to Paradise on foot. The world was quite a new world. They wanted to see what it was like by moonlight, now they were married.

Valentine walked disconsolately up the stairs, and there at the head of them, through a wide-open door, he saw a maid. The pale splendours of Dorothea’s gown were lying over her arm, and she was putting gold and pearls into a case. He darted past as quickly as he could, so glad to get out of sight, lest she should recognise him, for he shrewdly suspected that this was the same person who had been sent with Dorothea to Wigfield, when she first went there–one Mrs. Brand. So, in fact, it was; her husband was dead, she no longer sailed in old Captain Rollings yacht, and Brandon had invited her to come and stay in the house a while, and see her young lady again.

How glad he was to get away and shelter himself in his own room!–an uncomfortable sensation this for a fine young man. “What should I have done but for Grand and John?” was his thought. Grand and John were very considerate the next day. In the first place, Grand scarcely mentioned the bride during breakfast; in fact, so far as appeared, he had forgotten the party altogether. John was also considerate, gave Valentine plenty to do, and in a way that made him feel the yoke, took him in hand and saw that he did it.

It is often a great comfort to be well governed. John had a talent for government, and under his dominion Valentine had the pleasure of feeling, for the first time in his life, that he had certain things to do which must and should be done, after which he had a full right to occupy himself as he pleased.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A MORNING CALL.

“Learn now for all
That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce By the very truth of it, I care not for you.”–_Cymbeline._

“John,” said Valentine, ten days after this dinner party, “you have not called on D. yet, nor have I.”

“No,” John answered, observing his wish, “and it might not be a bad plan for us to go together.”

“Thank you, and if you would add the twins to–to make the thing easier and less formal.”

“Nonsense,” said John; “but yes, I’ll take some of the children, for of course you feel awkward.” He did not add, “You should not have made such a fool of yourself,” lest Valentine should answer, “I devoutly wish I had not;” but he went on, “And why don’t you say Dorothea, instead of using a nickname?”

“I always used to call her D.,” said Valentine.

“All the more reason why you should not now,” answered John.

And Valentine murmured to himself–

“‘These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, or lose myself in dotage’ (_Antony and Cleopatra_)” This he added from old habit. “I’ll quote everything I can think of to D., just to make her think I have forgotten her wish that I should leave off quoting; and if that is not doing my duty by St. George, I should like to know what is. Only that might put it into his head to quote too, and perhaps he might have the best of it. I fancy I hear him saying, ‘Art thou learned?’ I, as William, answer, ‘No, sir.’ ‘Then learn this of me,’ he makes reply, ‘to have is to have; for all your writers do consent that _ipse_ is he. Now you are not _ipse_, for I am he. He, sir, that hath married this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon, which is–,’ &c., &c. What a fool I am!”

John, adding the twins and little Bertram to the party, drove over on a Saturday afternoon, finding no one at home but Mrs. Henfrey.

“St. George,” she said, “has taken to regular work, and sits at his desk all the morning, and for an hour or two in the afternoon, excepting on Saturday, when he gives himself a half-holiday, as if he was a schoolboy.”

“And where was he now?” John asked.

“Somewhere about the place with Dorothea; he had been grubbing up the roots of the trees in a corner of the little wood at all leisure times; he thought of turning it into a vegetable garden.”

“Why, we always had more vegetables than we could use,” exclaimed Valentine, “and we were three times as large a family.”

“Very true, my dear, but they are full of schemes–going to grow some vegetables, I think, and flowers, for one of the county hospitals. It would not be like him, you know, to go on as other people do.”

“No,” Valentine answered. “And he always loved a little hard work out of doors; he is wise to take it now, or he would soon get tired of stopping peaceably at home, playing Benedict in this dull place.”

The children were then sent out to find where the young wife was, and come and report to their father, telling her that he would pay his call out of doors.

“And so you are still here, sister,” observed Valentine, willing to change the subject, for he had been rather disconcerted by a quiet smile with which she had heard his last speech.

“Yes, my dear, the fact is, they won’t let me go.”

“Ah, indeed?”

“Of course I never thought they would want me. And the morning after they came home I mentioned that I had been looking out for a house–that small house that I consulted John about, and, in fact, took.”

Mrs. Henfrey was hardly ever known to launch into narration. She almost always broke up her remarks by appeals to one and another of her listeners, and she now did not go on till John had made the admission that she had consulted him. She then proceeded with all deliberation–

“But you should have seen how vexed St. George looked. He had no idea, he said, that I should ever think of leaving him; and, indeed, I may mention to you in confidence, both of you, that he always drew for me what money I said was wanted for the bills, and he no more thought of looking at my housekeeping books than my father did.”

“Really,” said Valentine.

He was quite aware of this, to him, insignificant fact, but to have said more would only have put her out, and he wanted her to talk just then.

“And so,” she continued slowly, “I said to him, I said, ‘My dear Giles, I have had a pleasant home in this house, many, many years, indeed, ever since you were a child; but it is my opinion (and you will find it is the general opinion) that every young wife should have her house to herself.’ I did not doubt at all that this was her opinion too, only I considered that as he had spoken so plainly, she might not like to say so.”

“No, very likely not,” said John, when she stopped, as if stranded, till somebody helped her on with a remark.

“You are quite right, John, any one might have thought so; but in a minute or two. ‘Well,’ said St. George, ‘this is rather a blow;’ and what does that pretty creature do but come and sit by me, and begin to coax me. ‘She wanted me so much, and it would be so kind if I would but stop and do as I always had done, and she would be so careful to please me, and she had always thought the house was so beautifully managed, and everything in such order, and so regular.'”

“So it is,” Valentine put in. “She is quite right there.”

“‘And she didn’t know how to order the dinner,’ she said; and so she went on, till I said, ‘Well, my dears, I don’t wish that there should be any mistake about this for want of a little plain speaking.'”

“Well?” said John, when she came to a dead stop.

“And she said, ‘You love St. George, don’t you, just as much as if he was related to you?’ ‘How can any one help loving him?’ ‘And I know if you leave us he won’t be half so comfortable. And nobody should ever interfere with you,’ So I said I would keep their house for them, and you may suppose how glad I was to say it, for I’m like a cat, exactly like a cat–I don’t like to leave a place that I am used to, and it would have been difficult for her to manage.”

“Yes, very.”

“I had often been thinking, when I supposed I had to go, that she would never remember to see that the table-linen was all used in its proper turn, and to have the winter curtains changed for white ones before the sun faded them.”

“You’re such a comfortable, dear thing to live with,” observed Valentine, now the narrative was over. “Everybody likes you, you know.”

Mrs. Henfrey smiled complacently, accepting the compliment. She was, to all strangers, an absolutely uninteresting woman; but her family knew her merits, and Giles and Valentine were both particularly alive to them.

“And so here I am,” continued ‘sister,’ “but it is a pity for poor Emily, for she wanted me to live in that house, you know, John, with her.”

“But I thought old Walker was devoted to her,” said John.

“So he was, my dear, so long as her boy was with her; but now she is nobody, and I am told he shows a willingness to let her go, which is almost like dismissing her.”

“I hope she will not get my old woman away to live with her,” thought John, with a sudden start. “I don’t know what I may be driven to, if she does. I shall have to turn out of my own house, or take the Golden Head into it by way of protection. No, not that! I’ll play the man. But,” he thought, continuing his cogitations, “Emily is too young and attractive to live alone, and what so natural as that she should ask her old aunt to come to her?”

John was still deeply cogitating on this knotty point when the children came back, and conducted him and Valentine to the place where Brandon was at work, and Dorothea sitting near him on a tree-stump knitting.

None of the party ever forgot that afternoon, but each remembered it as an appeal to his own particular circumstances. Brandon was deep in the contentment of a great wish fulfilled. The newly-perfected life was fresh and sweet, and something of reserve in the character and manners of his wife seemed to restrain him from using up the charm of it too fast. His restless and passionate nature was at once satisfied and kept in check by the freshness and moderation of hers. She received his devotion very quietly, made no demonstrations, but grew to him, laid up his confidences in her heart, and let him discover–though she never said it–that all the rest of the world was becoming as nothing for his sake. Accordingly it did not occur to him, excepting on Valentine’s own account, to consider how he might feel during this interview. He noticed that he was a little sulky and perhaps rather out of countenance; he did not wonder at these things; but being absolutely secure of his wife’s love, he never even said to himself how impossible it was that her affection should revert to Valentine; but this was for the simple reason that he had never thought about that matter at all. He talked to Valentine on indifferent subjects, and felt that he should be glad when he had got over the awkwardness he was then evidently enduring, for they had been accustomed, far more than most brothers, to live together on terms of familiar intimacy, and only one of them at present was aware that this could never be again.

Valentine also never forgot, but often saw that picture again with the fresh fulness of the leaves for a background to the girlish figure; and the fair face so innocent and candid and so obviously content. She was seated opposite to him, with Brandon on the grass close to her. In general they addressed each other merely by the Christian name, but just before John rose to take leave, Dorothea dropped her ball. It rolled a little way, and pointing it out to Brandon with her long wooden knitting-pin, she said, in a soft quiet tone, “Love, will you pick it up?” and Valentine, who had overheard the little speech, was inexpressibly hurt, almost indignant. He could not possibly have told why, but he hoped she did not say that often, and when Brandon gave it into her hand again, and said something to her that Valentine could not hear, he felt almost as if he had been unkindly used, as if his feelings had been insulted, and he vowed that it should be a long time before he came to see them again.

“It won’t do,” he thought to himself. “I see this means a great deal more than I ever thought it did. I thought Giles would be jealous, and I should have to set things in a light that would satisfy him; but it is I who am jealous, and he does not care what I feel at all. She is all I could wish; but I don’t know whether looking at her is most bitter or most sweet.”

As for John, he had walked down to the wood as usual, in full possession of his present self, and as he supposed of his future intentions, and yet, sitting opposite to these married lovers for a quarter of an hour, wrought a certain change in him that nothing ever effaced. It was an alien feeling to him to be overcome by a yearning discontent. Something never yet fed and satisfied made its presence known to him. It was not that sense which comes to all, sooner or later, that human life cannot give us what we expected of it, but rather a passionate waking to the certainty that he never even for one day had possessed what it might have given. He had never been endowed for one day with any deep love, with its keen perceptions and high companionship.

“Well, I suppose I didn’t deserve it,” he thought, half angrily, while he tried to trample the feeling down and stifle it. But his keener instincts soon rose up in him and let him know that he did deserve it. It was very extraordinary that he had not won it–there were few men, indeed, who deserved it half so well.

“But it’s too late now,” he chose to say to himself, as he drove home. “It’s not in my line either to go philandering after any woman. Besides, I hate red hair. The next _Dissolution_ I’ll stand for the borough of Wigfield. Seven children to bring up, and one of them almost as big as myself–what a fool I am! What can I have been thinking of?”

“What are you laughing at, papa?” said Barbara, who was sitting beside him.

“Not at you, my darling,” he replied; “for you are something real.”

For the next few weeks neither he nor Valentine saw much of Dorothea: excepting at three or four dinners, they scarcely met at all. After this came the Harrow holidays. Johnny came home, and with him the inevitable Crayshaw. The latter was only to stay a week, and that week should have been spent with Brandon, but the boys had begged hard to be together, having developed a peculiar friendship for one another which seemed to have been founded on many fights, in consequence of which they had been strictly forbidden to meet.

This had taken place more than a year before, when Crayshaw, having been invited by John to spend the holidays with his boy, the two had quarrelled, and even fought, to such a degree that John at last in despair had taken Johnnie over to his grandfather’s house, with the declaration that if he so much as spoke to Crayshaw again, or crossed the wide brook that ran between the two houses, he would fine him half-a-crown every time he did it.

“Ith all that hateful map,” said young hopeful sulkily, when he was borne off to his banishment.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” quoth his father. “I don’t care what it’s about. You have no notion of hospitality. I won’t have you fight with your guest.”

Crayshaw was in very weak health, but full of mischief and fun. For a few days he seemed happy enough, then he flagged, and on the fifth morning he laid half-a-crown beside John’s plate at breakfast.

“What’s this for?” asked John.

“Because it is not fair that he should be fined, and not I.”

“Put it in the missionary box,” said John, who knew very well that the boys had been constructing a dam together all the previous day.

“It was about their possessions that they quarrelled,” said Gladys in giving an account of the matter afterwards. “They made a plan that they would go into partnership, and conquer all the rest of the world; but when they looked at the great map up in Parliament, and Johnnie found how much the most he had got, he said Cray must annex Japan, or he would not join. Cray said it was against his principles. So they quarrelled, and fought once or twice; but perhaps it was just as well, for you know the rest of the world would rather not be conquered. Then, when they were fined for playing together, they did every day. They made a splendid dam over the brook, which was very low; but one night came a storm, father’s meadows were flooded, they could not get the dam undone, and some sheep were drowned. So they went to Grand, and begged him to tell father, and get them off. They said it was a strange thing they were never to be together, and neither of them had got a penny left. So Grand got them forgiven, and we went all over the meadows for two or three days in canoes and punts.”

And now these two desirable inmates were to be together for a week. A great deal can be done in a week, particularly by those who give their minds to it because they know their time is short. That process called turning the house out of windows took place when John was away. Aunt Christie, who did not like boys, kept her distance, but Miss Crampton being very much scandalized by the unusual noise, declared, on the second morning of these holidays, that she should go up into Parliament, and see what they were all about. Miss Crampton was not supposed ever to go up into Parliament; it was a privileged place.

“Will the old girl really come, do you think?” exclaimed Crayshaw.

“She says she shall, as soon as she has done giving Janie her music lesson,” replied Barbara, who had rushed up the steep stairs to give this message.

“Mon peruke!” exclaimed Johnnie looking round, “you’d better look out, then, or vous l’attrapperais.”

The walls were hung with pictures, maps, and caricatures; these last were what had attracted Johnnie’s eyes, and the girls began hastily to cover them.

“It’s very unkind of her,” exclaimed Barbara. “Father never exactly said that we were to have our own playroom to ourselves, but we know, and she knows, that he meant it.”

Then, after a good deal of whispering, giggling, and consulting among the elder ones, the little boys were dismissed; and in the meantime Mr. Nicholas Swan, who, standing on a ladder outside, was nailing the vines (quite aware that the governess was going to have a reception which might be called a warning never to come there any more), may or may not have intended to make his work last as long as possible. At any rate, he could with difficulty forbear from an occasional grin, while, with his nails neatly arranged between his lips, he leisurely trained and pruned; and when he was asked by the young people to bring them up some shavings and a piece of wood, he went down to help in the mischief, whatever it might be, with an alacrity ill suited to his years and gravity.

“Now, I’ll tell you what, young gentlemen,” he remarked, when, ascending, he showed his honest face again, thrust in a log of wood, and exhibited an armful of shavings, “I’m agreeable to anything but gunpowder, or that there spark as comes cantering out o’ your engine with a crack. No, Miss Gladys, ex-cuse me, I don’t give up these here shavings till I know it’s all right.”

“Well, well, it _ith_ all right,” exclaimed Johnnie, “we’re not going to do any harm! O Cray, he’th brought up a log ath big ath a fiddle. Quelle alouette!”

“How lucky it is that she has never seen Cray!” exclaimed Barbara. “Johnnie, do be calm; how are we to do it, if you laugh so? Now then, you are to be attending to the electrifying machine.”

“Swanny,” asked Crayshaw, “have you got a pipe in your pocket? I want one to lie on my desk.”

“Well, now, to think o’ your asking me such a question, just as if I was ever _known_ to take so much as a whiff in working hours–no, not in the tool-house, nor nowhere.”

“But just feel. Come, you might.”

“Well, now, this here is remarkable,” exclaimed Swan, with a start as if of great surprise, when, after feeling in several pockets, a pipe appeared from the last one.

“Don’t knock the ashes out.”

“She’s coming,” said Swan, furtively glancing down, and then pretending to nail with great diligence. “And, my word, if here isn’t Miss Christie with her!”

A great scuffle now ensued to get things ready. Barbara darted down stairs, and what she may have said to Aunt Christie while Swan received some final instructions above, is of less consequence than what Miss Crampton may have felt when she found herself at the top of the stairs in the long room, with its brown high-pitched roof–a room full of the strangest furniture, warm with the sun of August, and sweet with the scent of the creepers.

Gladys and Johnnie were busy at the electrifying machine, and with a rustling and crackling noise the “spunky little flashes,” as Swan called them, kept leaping from one leaden knob to another.

Miss Crampton saw a youth sitting on a low chair, with his legs on rather a higher one; the floor under him was strewed with shavings, which looked, Swan thought, “as natural as life,” meaning that they looked just as if he had made them by his own proper whittling.

The youth in question was using a large pruning knife on a log that he held rather awkwardly on his knee. He had a soft hat, which had been disposed over one eye. Miss Crampton gave the sparks as wide a berth as she could, and as she advanced, “Well, sir,” Swan was saying in obedience to his instructions, “if you’ve been brought up a republican, I spose you can’t help it. But whatever _your_ notions may be, Old Master is staunch. He’s all for Church and Queen and he hates republican institootions like poison. Which is likewise my own feelings to a T.”

No one had taken any notice of Miss Crampton, and she stopped amazed.

“Wall,” answered the youth, diligently whittling, “I think small potatoes of ye-our lo-cation myself–but ye-our monarchical government, I guess, hez not yet corrupted the he-eart of the Grand. He handed onto me and onto his hair a tip which”–here he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, and fondly regarded two or three coins; then feigning to become aware of Miss Crampton’s presence, “Augustus John, my yound friend,” he continued, “ef yeow feel like it, I guess yeou’d better set a chair for the school marm–for it is the school marm, I calculate?”

Here Miss Christie, radiant with joy and malice, could not conceal her delight, but patted him on the shoulder, and then hastily retreated into the background, lest she should spoil the sport; while as Johnnie, having small command of countenance, did not dare to turn from the window out of which he was pretending to look, Crayshaw rose himself, shook hands with Miss Crampton, and setting a chair for her, began to whittle again.

“Wall,” he then said, “and heow do yeou git along with ye-our teaching, marm? Squire thinks a heap of ye-our teaching, as I he-ear, specially ye-our teaching of the eye-talian tongue.”

“Did I understand you to be arguing with the gardener when I came in, respecting the principles and opinions of this family?” inquired Miss Crampton, who had now somewhat recovered from her surprise, and was equal to the resenting of indignities.

“Wall, mebby I was, but it’s a matter of science that we’re mainly concerned with, I guess, this morning–science, electricity. We’re gitting on first-rate–those rods on the stairs—-“

“Yes?” exclaimed Miss Crampton.

“We air of a scientific turn, we air–Augustus John and I–fixing wires to every one of them. They air steep, those steps,” he continued pensively.

Here Miss Crampton’s colour increased visibly.

“And when the machine is che-arged, we shall electrify them. So that when yeou dew but touch one rod, it’ll make yeou jump as high as the next step, without any voluntary effort. Yeou’ll find that an improvement.”

Here Swan ducked down, and laughed below at his ease.

“We air very scientific in my country.”

“Indeed!”

“Ever been to Amurica?”

“Certainly not,” answered Miss Crampton with vigour, “nor have I the slightest intention of ever doing so. Pray, are you allowed, in consideration of your nationality, to whittle in Harrow School?”

This was said by way of a reproof for the state of the floor.

“Wall,” began Crayshaw, to cover the almost audible titters of the girls; but, distracted by this from the matter in hand, he coughed, went on whittling, and held his peace.

“I have often told Johnnie,” said Miss Crampton with great dignity, at the same time darting a severe glance at Johnnie’s back, “that the delight he takes in talking the Devonshire dialect is likely to be very injurious to his English, and he will have it that this country accent is not permanently catching. It may be hoped,” she continued, looking round, “that other accents are not catching either.”

Crayshaw, choosing to take this hint as a compliment, smiled sweetly. “I guess I’m speaking better than usual,” he observed, “for my brother and his folks air newly come from the Ste-ates, and I’ve been with them. But,” he continued, a sudden gleam of joy lighting up his eyes as something occurred to him that he thought suitable to “top up” with, “all the Mortimers talk with such a peowerful English ac-_cent_, that when I come de-own to this _lo_-cation, my own seems to melt off my tongue. Neow, yeou’ll skasely believe it,” he continued, “but it’s tre-u, that ef yeou were tew hea-ar me talk at the end of a week, yeou’d he-ardly realise that I was an Amurican at all.”

“Cray, how can ye?” exclaimed Aunt Christie, “and so wan as ye look this morning too.”

“Seen my brother?” inquired Crayshaw meekly.

“No, I have not,” said Miss Crampton bridling.

“He’s merried. We settle airly in my country; it’s one of our institootions.” Another gleam of joy and impudence shot across the pallid face. “I’m thinking of settling shortly myself.”