'She does not look like it,' observed Ivinghoe, while Mysie and Fly, with one voice, exclaimed that her father was an officer in the Royal Wardours.

'A private first,' said Wilfred, with boyhood's reiteration. 'Cads and quarrymen all of them--the whole boiling, old White and all, though he has got such a stuck-up house!'

'Nonsense, Will,' said Fly. 'Why, Mr. White has dined with us.'

'A patent of n.o.bility, said Jasper, smiling.

'I don't care,' said Wilfred; 'if other people choose to chum with old stonemasons and convicts, I don't.'

'Wilfred, that is too bad,' said Gillian. 'It is very wrong to talk in that way.'

'Oh!' said the audacious Wilfred, 'we all know who is Gill's Jack!'

'Shut up, Will!' cried Fergus, flying at him. 'I told you not to--'

But Wilfred bounded up a steep bank, and from that place of vantage went on--

'Didn't she teach him Greek, and wasn't he spoony; and didn't she send back his valentine, so that--'

Fergus was scrambling up the bank after him, enraged at the betrayal of his confidence, and shouting inarticulately, while poor Gillian moved on, overwhelmed with confusion, and Fly uttered the cutting words, 'Perfectly disgusting!'

'Ay, so it was!' cried the unabashed Wilfred, keeping on at the top of the bank, and shaking the bushes at every pause. 'So he broke down the rocks, and ran away with the tin, and enlisted, and went to prison. Such a sweet young man for Gill!'

Poor Gillian! was her punishment never to end? That sc.r.a.pe of hers, hitherto so tenderly and delicately hinted at, and which she would have given worlds to have kept from her brothers, now shouted all over the country! Sympathy, however, she had, if that would do her any good.

Mysie and Fly came on each side of Ivinghoe, a.s.suring him, in low eager voices, of the utter nonsense of the charge, and explaining ardently; and Jasper, with one bound, laid hold of the tormentor, dragged him down, and, holding his stick over him, said--

'Now, Wilfred, if you don't hold your tongue, and not behave like a brute, I shall send you straight home.'

'It's quite true,' growled Wilfred. 'Ask her.'

'What does that signify? I'm ashamed of you! I've a great mind to thrash you this instant. If you speak another word of that sort, I shall. Now then, there are the governesses trying to stop to see what's the row.

I shall give you up to Miss Vincent, if you choose to behave so like a spiteful girl.'

A sixth-form youth was far too great a man to be withstood by one who was not yet a public schoolboy at all; and Wilfred actually obeyed, while Jasper added to Fergus--

'How could you be such a little a.s.s as to go and tell him all that rot?'

'It was true,' grumbled Fergus.

'The more reason not to go cackling about it like an old hen, or a girl!

Your own sister! I'm ashamed of you both. Mind, I shall thrash you if you mention it again.'

Poor Fergus felt the accusation of cackling unjust, since he had only told Wilfred in confidence, and that had been betrayed, but he had got his lesson on family honour, and he subsided into his wonted look-out for curious stones, while Gillian was overtaken by Jasper--whether willingly or not, she hardly knew--but his first word was, 'Little beast!'

'You didn't hurt him, I hope,' said Gill, accepting the invitation to take his arm.

'Oh no! I only threatened to make him walk with the governesses and the donkeys.'

'a.s.ses and savants to the centre,' said Gillian; 'like the orders to the French army in Egypt.'

'But what's all this about? You wanted me to look after you! Is it that Alexis?'

'Oh, j.a.ps! Mamma knows all about it and papa. It was only that he was ridiculous because I was so silly as to think I could help him with his Greek.'

'You! With his Greek! I pity him!'

'Yes. I found he soon knew too much for me,' said Gillian meekly; 'but, indeed, j.a.ps, it wasn't very bad! He only sent me a valentine, and Aunt Jane says I need not have been so angry.'

'A cat may look at a king,' said Jasper loftily. 'It is a horrid bad thing for a girl to be left to herself without a brother worth having.'

So Gillian got off pretty easily, and after all the walk was not greatly spoilt. They coalesced again with the other three, who were tolerably discreet, and found the debate on the White gentility had been resumed.

Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring 'that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was f.a.g at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn't half a bad lot.'

'An oilman, Ivy,' said his sister; 'I thought he imported petroleum.'

'Well, it's all the same. I believe he began as an oilman.'

'We shall have Fergus reporting that he's a petroleuse,' put in Jasper.

'No, a petroleuse is a woman.'

'I like Mr. White,' said Fly; 'but, Gillian, you don't think it is true that he is going to marry your Aunt Jane?'

There was a great groan, and j.a.ps observed--

'Some one told us Rockquay was a hotbed of gossip, and we seem to have got it strong.'

'Where did this choice specimen come from, Fly!' demanded Ivinghoe, in his manner most like his mother.

Fly nodded her head towards her governess in the advanced guard.

'She had a cousin to tea with her, and they thought I didn't know whom they meant, and they said that he was always up at Rockstone.'

'Well, he is; and Aunt Jane always stands up for him,' said Gillian; 'but that was because he is so good to the workpeople, and Aunt Ada took him for some grand political friend of Cousin Rotherwood's.'

'Aunt Jane!' said Jasper. 'Why, she is the very essence and epitome of old maids.'

'Yes,' said Gillian. 'If it came to that, she would quite as soon marry the postman.'

'That's lucky' said Ivinghoe. 'One can swallow a good deal, but not quite one's own connections.'

'In fact,' said Jasper, 'you had rather be an oilman's f.a.g than a quarryman's--what is it?--first cousin once removed in law?'

'It is much more likely,' said Gillian, as they laughed over this, 'that Kalliope and Maura will be his adopted daughters, only he never comes near them.'

Wherewith there was a halt. Miss Elbury insisted that Phyllis should ride, the banks began to show promise of flowers, and, in the search for violets, dangerous topics were forgotten, and Wilfred was forgiven. They reached the spot marked by Fly, a field with a border of sloping broken ground and brushwood, which certainly fulfilled all their desires, steeply descending to a stream full of rocks, the ground white with wood anemones, long evergreen trails of periwinkles and blue flowers between, primroses cl.u.s.tering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the gra.s.s above, and the banks verdant with exquisite feather-moss. Such a springtide wood was joy to all, especially as the first cuckoo of the season came to add to their delights and set them counting for the augury of happy years, which proved so many that Mysie said they would not know what to do with them.

'I should,' said Ivinghoe. 'I should like to live to be a great old statesman, as Lord Palmerston did, and have it all my own way. Wouldn't I bring things round again!'