"Halloo, you deserter!"

"Hush! Mother has a headache."

"Not now, you have cured it."

"Well, you've missed an encounter with the most impudent rascal I ever came across."

"You didn't meet Hermann?"

"Well, perhaps I have found his match; but you shall hear. Grimes said he heard guns, and we came upon the scoundrel in Lewis Acre, two brace on his shoulder."

"The vultures are gathering to the prey," said his mother.

"I'm not arrived at lying still to be devoured!" said Bobus. "I gave him the benefit of a doubt, and sent Grimes to warn him off; but the fellow sent his card--_his_ card forsooth, 'Mr. Gilbert Gould, R.N.,'--and information that he had Miss Menella's permission."

"Not credible," said Jock.

"Mrs. Lisette's more likely," said his mother. "I think he is her brother."

"I sent Grimes back to tell him that Miss Menella had as much power to give leave as my old pointer, and if he did not retire at once, we should gently remove his gun and send out a summons."

"Why did you not do so at once?" cried Jock.

"Because I have brains enough not to complicate matters by a personal row with the Goulds," said Bobus, "though I could wish not to have been there, when the keepers would infallibly have done so. Shall I write to George Gould, or will you, mother?"

"Oh dear," sighed Caroline, "I think Mr. Wakefield is the fittest person, if it signifies enough to have it done at all."

"Signifies!" cried Jock. "To have that rascal loafing about! I wouldn't be trampled upon while the life is in me!"

"I don't like worrying Mr. Gould. It is not his fault, except for having married such a wife, poor man."

"Having been married by her, you mean," said Bobus. "Mark me, she means to get that fellow married to that poor child, as sure as fate."

"Impossible, Bobus! His age!"

"He is a good deal younger than his sister, and a prodigious swell."

"Besides, he is her uncle," said Jock.

"No, no, only her uncle's wife's brother."

"That's just the same."

"I wish it were!" But Jock would not be satisfied without getting a Prayer-book, to look at the table of degrees.

"He is really her third cousin, I believe," said his mother, "and I'm afraid that is not prohibited."

"Is he a ship's steward?" said Jock, looking at the card with infinite disgust.

"A paymaster's a.s.sistant, I believe."

"That would be too much. Besides, there's the Scot!"

"I don't think much of that," said Jock. "The mother and sister are keen for it, but Clanmacnalty is in no haste to marry, and by all accounts the Elf carries on promiscuously with three or four at once."

"And she has no fine instinct for a gentleman," added Bobus. "It is who will spread the b.u.t.ter thickest!"

"A bad look out for Belforest," said Jock.

"It can't be much worse than it has been with me," said his mother.

"That's what that little a.s.s, Armine, has been presuming to din into your ears," said Bobus; "as if the old women didn't prefer beef and blankets to your coming poking piety at the poor old parties."

"By the bye," cried Caroline, starting, "those children have never come home, and see how it rains!"

Jock volunteered to take the pony carriage and fetch them, but he had not long emerged from the park in the gathering twilight before he overtook two figures under one umbrella, and would have pa.s.sed them had he not been hailed.

"You demented children! Jump in this instant."

"Don't turn!" called Armine. "We must take this," showing a parcel which he had been sheltering more carefully than himself or his sister. "It is cord and ta.s.sels for the banner. They sent wrong ones," said Barbara, "and we had to go and match it. They would not let me go alone."

"Get in, I say," cried Jock, who was making demonstrations with the "national weapon" much as if he would have liked to lay it about their shoulders.

"Then we must drive onto the Parsonage," stipulated Armine.

"Not a bit of it, you drenched and foolish morsel of humanity. You are going straight home to bed. Hand us the parcel. What will you give me not to tie this cord round the Reverend Petronella's neck?"

"Thank you, Jock, I'm so glad," said Babie, referring probably to the earlier part of his speech. "We would have come home for the pony carriage, but we thought it would be out."

"Take care of the drip," was Armine's parting cry, as Babie turned the pony's head, and Jock strode down the lane. He meant merely to have given in the parcel at the door, but Miss Parsons darted out, and not distinguishing him in the dark began, "Thank you, dear Armine; I'm so sorry, but it is in the good cause and you won't regret it. Where's your sister? Gone home? But you'll come and have a cup of tea and stay to evensong?"

"My brother and sister are gone home, thank you," said Jock, with impressive formality, and a manly voice that made her start.

"Oh, indeed. Thank you, Mr. Brownlow. I was so sorry to let them go; but it had not begun to rain, and it is such a joy to dear Armine to be employed in the service."

"Yes, he is mad enough to run any risk," said Jock.

"Oh, Mr. Brownlow, if I could only persuade you to enter into the joy of self-devotion, you would see that I could not forbid him! Won't you come in and have a cup of tea?"

"Thank you, no. Good night." And Miss Parsons was left rejoicing at having said a few words of reproof to that cynical Mr. Robert Brownlow, while Jock tramped away, grinning a sardonic smile at the lady's notions of the joys of self-sacrifice.

He came home only just in time for dinner, and found Armine enduring, with a touching resignation learnt in Miss Parsons's school, the sarcasm of Bobus for having omitted to prepare his studies. The boy could neither eat nor entirely conceal the chills that were running over him; and though he tried to silence his brother's objurgations by bringing out his books afterwards, his cheeks burnt, he emitted little grunting coughs, and at last his head went down on the lexicon, and his breath came quick and short.

The Harvest Festival day was perforce kept by him in bed, blistered and watched from hour to hour to arrest the autumn cold, which was the one thing dreaded as imperilling him in the English winter which he must face for the first time for four years.

And Miss Parsons, when impressively told, evidently thought it was the family fashion to make a great fuss about him.

Alas! why are people so one-sided and absorbed in their own concerns as never to guess what stumbling-blocks they raise in other people's paths, nor how they make their good be evil spoken of?