"I am afraid it is!" sighed Caroline. "Dear Essie! I will do my best to keep her peace from being ruffled, for I know you are quite right; but I can't help being sorry for my boy, and he is so determined that I don't think he will give up easily."

"You may let him understand that nothing will ever make me consent,"

returned the Colonel.

"I will, if he enters on it with me," said Caroline; "but I think it is advisable as long as possible to prevent it from taking a definite shape."

Caroline was much better able now to hold her own with her brother and sister-in-law. Not only did her position and the obligations they were under give her weight, but her character had consolidated itself in these years, and she had much more force, and appearance of good sense.

Besides, John was a weight in the family now, and his feeling for his aunt was not without effect. They talked of his prospects and of Jessie's marriage, over their early tea. The elders of the walking party came in with hands full of flowers, namely, the two Johns and Eleanor, but ominously enough, Bobus was not there. He had been lost sight of soon after they had met.

Yes, and at that moment he was loitering at a safe distance from the door of the now invalid and half-blind Mrs. Coffinkey, to whom the Brownlow girls read by turns. She lived conveniently up a lane not much frequented. This was the colloquy which ensued when the tall, well-proportioned maiden, with her fresh, modest, happy face, tripped down the steps:--

"So the Coffinkey is unlocked at last! Stern Proserpine relented!"

"Robert! You here?"

"You never used to call me Robert."

"Mamma says it is time to leave off the other."

"Perhaps she would like you to call me Mr. Robert Otway Brownlow."

"Don't talk of mamma in that way."

"I would do anything my queen tells me except command my tones when there is an attempt to stiffen her. She is not to be made into buckram."

"Please, Robert," as some one met and looked at them, "let me walk on by myself."

"What? Shall I be the means of getting you into trouble?"

"No, but I ought not--"

"The road is clear now, never mind. In town there are no gossips, that's one comfort. Mother Carey is propounding the plan now."

"Oh, but we shall not go. Mamma told me so last night."

"That was before Mother Carey had talked her over."

"Do you think she will?"

"I am certain of it! You are a sort of child of Mother Carey's own, you know, and we can't do without you."

"Mother would miss us so, just as we are getting useful."

"Yes, but Ellie might stay."

"Oh! we have never been parted. We _couldn't_ be."

"Indeed! Is there no one that could make up to you for Ellie?"

"No, indeed!" indignantly.

"Ah, Essie, you are too much of a child yet to understand the force of the love that--"

"Don't," broke in Esther, "that is just like people in novels; and mamma would not like it."

"But if I feel ten times far more for you than 'the people in novels'

attempt to express?"

"Don't," again cried Esther. "It is Sunday."

"And what of that, my most scriptural little queen?"

"It isn't a time to talk out of novels," said Esther, quickening her pace, to reach the frequented road and throng of church-goers."

"I am not talking out of any novel that ever was written," said Bobus seriously; but she was speeding on too fast to heed him, and started as he laid a hand on her arm.

"Stay, Essie; you must not rush on like a frightened fawn, or people will stare," he said; and she slackened her pace, though she shook him off and went on through the numerous pa.s.sengers on the footpath, with her pretty head held aloft with the stately grace of the startled pheasant, not choosing to seem to hear his attempts at addressing her, and taking refuge at last in the innermost recesses of the family seat at Church, though it was full a quarter to five.

There the rest of the party found her, and as they did not find Bobus, they concluded that all was safe. However, when the two Johns were walking home with Mother Carey, Bobus joined them, and soon made his mother fall behind with him, asking her, "I hope your eloquence prevailed."

"Far from it, Bobus," she said. "In fact you have alarmed them."

"H. S. H. doesn't improve with age," he replied carelessly. "She never troubled herself about Jessie."

"Perhaps no one gave her cause. My dear boy, I am very sorry for you,"

and she laid her hand within his arm.

"Have they been baiting you? Poor little Mother Carey!" he said. "Force of habit, you know, that's all. Never mind them."

"Bobus, my dear, I must speak, and in earnest. I am afraid you may be going on so as to make yourself and--some one else unhappy, and you ought to know that your father was quite as determined as your uncle against marriages between first cousins."

"My dear mother, it will be quite time to argue that point when the matter becomes imminent. I am not asking to marry any one before I am called to the bar, and it is very hard if we cannot, in the meantime, live as cousins."

"Yes, but there must be no attempt to be 'a little more than kin.'"

"Less than kind comes in on the other side!" said Bobus, in his throat.

"I tell you the child _is_ a child who has no soul apart from her sister, and there's no use in disturbing her till she has grown up to have a heart and a will of her own."

"Then you promise to let her alone?"

"I pledge myself to nothing," said Bobus, in an impracticable voice. "I only give warning that a commotion will do n.o.body any good."

She knew he had not abandoned his intention, and she also knew she had no power to make him abandon it, so that all she could say was, "As long as you make no move there will be no commotion, but I only repeat my a.s.surance that neither your uncle nor I, acting in the person, of your dear father, will ever consent."

"To which I might reply, that most people end by doing that against which they have most protested. However, I am not going to stir in the matter for some time to come, and I advise no one else to do so."