"And tell him to bring a judiciously-selected a.s.sortment of undergraduate friends with him," supplements Bobby, loudly.

"Yes," say I, sighing, "I know I did; but last night was last night."

"That throws a great deal of light on the matter, does it not?" says Algy, ironically.

"Nancy!" cries Bobby, seizing both my hands, and looking me in the face with an air of irritated determination, "if you do not _this moment_ stop sighing like a windmill and tell us what is up, I will go to Sir Roger, hanged if I will not, and ask him what he means by making you cry yourself to a _jelly_!"

At this bold metaphor applied to my own appearance, the tears begin again to start to my eyes.

"Do not!" cry I, eagerly, catching at his wrists in detention, "it was not his fault! he could not help it; but" (mopping first one eye and then the other, and finishing by a dolorous blast on my nose) "but I am so disappointed, every thing is _so_ changed, and I know I shall miss him _so_ much!" I end with a break in my voice, and a long whimper.

"_Miss him!_ miss whom?"

"The ge-general!" reply I, indistinctly, from the recesses of a drenched pocket-handkerchief.

"But what is going to happen to him? where is he going to? I wish that you would be a little more intelligible," cry they all, impatiently.

"He is going to the West Indies, to Antigua," reply I, lifting my face and speaking with a slow dejection.

"_To Antigua!_" cries Algy; "but what in the world is going to take him there?"

"Perhaps," says Bobby, in a loud aside to Tou Tou, "perhaps he has got another wife out there--a _black_ one--and he thinks it is _her_ turn now!"

Barbara says, "Hush!" and Tou Tou is beginning to embark on a long argument to prove that a man _cannot_ have more than one wife at a time, when she is summarily _hustled_ into silence, for I speak again.

"He has some property in the West Indies--I knew he had before--" (with a pa.s.sing flash of pride in my superior information)--"I dare say you did not--and he has to go out there to look after it."

"_By himself?_"

"By himself, worse luck!" reply I, despondently, reinterring my countenance in my pocket-handkerchief.

"And you decline to accompany him? Well, I think you are about right!"

says Algy, rising, lounging over to the empty hearth, and looking at his face with a glance of serious fondness in the gla.s.s that hangs above the mantel-shelf.

"I do nothing of the kind!" cry I, indignantly, "I have not the chance!

he will not take me!"

I am not looking at him, nor, indeed, in his direction at all; but I am aware that Bobby is giving Tou Tou a private and severe nudge, which means "Attend! here is confirmation of my theory for you!" and that the idea of the hypothetical black lady is again traversing his ingenuous mind.

"I hope he will bring us some Jamaica ginger," he says, presently.

"I wish you would mention it, Nancy! the suggestion would come best from _you_, would not it?"

"And you are to be left _alone_ at Tempest? Is that the plan?" asks Algy, turning his eyes from his own face, and fixing them on the less interesting object of mine.

It may be my imagination, but I cannot help fancying that there is a tone of slight and repressed exultation in his voice; and also that a look of hope and bright expectation is pa.s.sing from one to another of the faces round me. All but Barbara's! Barbara always understands.

"_All alone?_" cries Tou Tou, opening her ugly little eyes to their widest stretch. "n.o.body but the servants in the house with you? Will not you be very much afraid of _ghosts_?"

"She need never be alone, unless she chooses," says Bobby, winking with dexterous slightness at the others; "there is the beauty of having three kind little brothers!"

"The moment you feel _at all_ lonely," says Algy, emphasizing his remarks by benevolent but emphatic strokes with his flat hand on my shoulder, "_send for us_! one of us is sure to be handy! If it will be any comfort to Sir Roger, I shall be most happy to promise him that I will keep _all_ his horses in exercise next winter!"

"I am sorrier than I was before," says Bobby, reflectively, "that the heavy rains have drowned so many of the young birds."

"O Nancy!" cries Tou Tou, ecstatically clasping her hands, "_have_ a Christmas-tree!"

"And a dance after it!" adds Bobby, beginning to whistle a waltz-tune.

"And Sir Roger's not being at home will be a good excuse for not asking father," cries Algy, catching the prevailing excitement.

"I will not have _one_ of you!" cry I, rising with a face pale, as I feel with anger--with flashing eyes and a trembling voice, "not _one_ of you shall enter his doors, except Barbara!--I _hate_ you _all_!--you are all g--g--_glad_ that he is going, and I--I never was so sorry for any thing in my life before!"

I end in a pa.s.sion of tears. There is a silence of consternation on the late so jubilant a.s.sembly.

"'Times is changed,' says the dog's-meat man,"

remarks Bobby, presently, veiling his discomfiture in vulgarity, and launching into uncouth and low-lived rhyme:

"'Lights is riz,' says the dog's-meat man!"

CHAPTER XXI.

However, not all the hot tears in the world--not all the swelled noses and boiled-gooseberry eyes avail to alter the case. Not even all my righteous wrath against the boys profits--and I do keep Bobby at arms'-length for a day and a half. No one who does not know Bobby understands how difficult such a course of proceeding is; for he is one of those people who ignore the finer shades of displeasure. The more delicately dignified and civilly frosty one is to him, the more grossly familiar and hopelessly, obtusely friendly is he. I have made several more efforts to change Sir Roger's decision, but in vain. He makes the case more difficult by laying his refusal chiefly on his own convenience; dilating on the much greater speed and ease with which he will be able to transact his business, if _alone_, than if weighted by a woman, and a woman's paraphernalia, and also on the desirability of having in me a _loc.u.m tenens_ for himself at Tempest. But, in my soul, I know that both these are hollow pretenses to lighten the weight on my conscience.

"But," say I, with discontented demurring, "you have been away often before! how did Tempest get on _then_?"

He laughs.

"Very middling, indeed! last time I was away the servants gave a ball in the new ballroom--so my friends told me afterward, and the time before, the butler took the housekeeper a driving-tour in my T.-cart. I should not have minded _that_ much--but I suppose he was not a very good whip, and so he threw down one of my best horses, and broke his knees!"

"Well, they _shall not_ give a ball!" say I, resolutely, "but"--(in a tone of melancholy helplessness)--"they may throw down _all_ the horses, for any thing _I_ can do to prevent them! A horse's knees would have to be _very much broken_ before I should perceive that they were!"

"You must get Algy to help you," he says, kindly. "It is an ill wind that blows n.o.body good, is not it? Poor boy!"--(laughing)--"You must not expect _him_ to be very keen about my speedy return."

As he speaks, an arrow of animosity toward Algy shoots through my heart.

We are at Tempest--Sir Roger and I. It has been his wish to establish me there before his departure; and now it is the gray of the evening before his setting off, and we are strolling through the still park. Vick is racing, with idiotic ardor, through the tall green bracken, after the mottled deer, yelping with shrill insanity, and vainly imagining that she is going to overtake them. The gray rabbits are scuttling across the gra.s.s rides in the pale light: as I see them popping in and out of their holes, I cannot help thinking of Bobby. Apparently, Sir Roger also is reminded of him.

"Nancy," he says, looking down at me with a smile of recollected entertainment, "have you forgiven Bobby yet for leaving you sitting on the wall? I remember, in the first blaze of your indignation, you vowed that never should he fire a gun in your preserves!--do you still stick to it, or have you forgiven him?"

"_That_ I have not!" cry I, heartily. "None of them shall shoot any thing! Why should they? Every thing shall be kept for you against you come back!"

He raises his eyebrows a little.