Chapter 3 A LETTER OF APOLOGY.

The afternoon's summer sun shone in on the chestnut head of a girl, bent sedulously over a book. She was Marjorie Bethune, only daughter of one of the minor canons of Norham. She was hard at work constructing a sonnet, to the accompaniment of the great organ in the cathedral, where her father was taking the service. The words of the psalms and anthem were almost audible, as well as their music, through the open windows, stimulating the girl's reluctant fancy.

There were other helps, too, to her imagination-the twitter of birds in the flowering trees near the further window, the hum of the bees in the lime-trees, the scents of syringa and lilies.

The room in which she sat had a much-lived-in air and a pleasant old-fashioned shabbiness of aspect. There was a large round table covered with papers and books, calf-bound and large for the greater part-the books and litter of a scholar. Books also were heaped on the quaint spindle-legged side-table with deep drawers, ornamented with carving and brass Tudor roses; and wherever in the room was any wall-space low bookshelves of a peculiar pattern filled it. The wall-colouring above was a rich tan and red, the whole making a harmonious background to the girl's burnished head and brilliantly fair complexion.

A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She lifted her eyes to the further end of the room, where on a sofa near the pretty window lay a fragile-looking woman. The extreme youthfulness of her appearance was not contradicted by the brilliancy of the beautiful dark eyes she turned now on Marjorie.

"Mother, I wish you would tell me exactly what father said when he proposed to you. I suppose he did propose?" questioningly, gazing in doubtful sympathy at the colour flooding her mother's face at her question.

"You will know for yourself some day, Marjorie," Mrs. Bethune said softly.

"I? But I want to know now. Just the facts. You can't make up things on nothing," disconsolately. "Our literary guild next month wants a poem-a sonnet by preference-on Love. Such a subject! I could imagine a lot. But I don't know."

Mrs. Bethune's eyes were full of laughter, but her face was grave as she looked at her discontented young daughter.

"People's experiences vary," she said reminiscently.

"Do they? But yours would do, mother-just to get a fact for a foundation. Love seems such a shimmery, slippery thing."

"It was behind the door-at a party first. He had asked me to look at a picture--"

"Behind the door! Father!" exclaimed Marjorie, breaking in on the reminiscence. "Oh, mother!"

Mrs. Bethune laughed. "You'll understand some day, Marjorie. That was the beginning; after that, I kept out of his way--" She paused.

"Yes?" said Marjorie interestedly. "I don't wonder. Behind the door! I couldn't put that in a sonnet."

"It was difficult to meet alone," went on the mother. "We lived four miles apart, And I was afraid. I didn't want him to speak, and yet--"

"Didn't you love him then? Perhaps I could put that. Or did loving him make you shy?"

"Perhaps. But he was masterful-he found a way."

"Masterful," mused Marjorie, much exercised at this new presentation of her scholarly father. "Then love alters characters, if it made father masterful and you shy. Well, those are at least some facts. Thank you. What else, mother? Tell me exactly, please."

"One day after lunch, when he had come over, I remembered that I had dropped my thimble under the table, and I went back to the dining-room to look for it."

"And he followed?"

"Yes; he followed, and he then and there proposed."

"But, mother," with misgivings, "do you think that was sonnet-sort of love?"

"Sure of it, Margie."

"It sounds so ordinary. However, I wanted facts," in a tone of resigned dejection.

Impatient steps sounded in the hall. Hats and books were flung down outside, and two boys of seven and nine respectively came into the room. Marjorie's glance fell upon her young brothers dispassionately, staying her reflections on love.

"You look as if you had been in mischief," she remarked, as a certain air of agitation conveyed itself to her perception.

"Yes; and found out, too," said Sandy, the seven-year-old, disgustedly.

"You know that new man at 'The Ridges,' mother," burst in the older boy. "He's had the cheek to say we're not to go that way any more."

"But have you been, David, since the General died?"

"Of course we have, mother; why not? I'd got the keys."

"As if keys mattered anyhow!" put in Sandy. "Anyone can climb over that wanted to. It's the nearest way."

"But it's private ground, not a public path. Only the General was kind to you."

"Yes, and this man's a beast," viciously.

Then he went on, with a pretty little lisp between the two lost teeth left on a field of battle: "But we've had some fun all these weeks, mother, dodging the work-people. They couldn't find out how we got in and out," delightedly, "even when we forgot the keys; there's always holes, somewhere. We didn't let 'em know; we just 'peared, and walked past the house, riling them. And if they ran us, didn't we just dodge 'em down the hill!"

"And now he says," put in David, "that he's written to father, and that he'll have no trespassing. Trespassing, indeed!"

"An' Dave called back that he was the trespasser, 'trudin' where he wasn't wanted," said Sandy gleefully, "an' that he'd better go back to Blackton, an' not fink he could come here and be a gentleman, cos no one would look at him!"

"Oh, David," said his mother reproachfully, "how could you? He will think we don't grow gentlemen here."

"Don't care for his thinks," muttered David. "Heard Charity and Mrs. Lytchett say it."

"No, David," put in Marjorie. "Charity said anyone from Blackton would feel like an intrusion, and all Mrs. Lytchett said was, that if he didn't like it he could always go back."

"That's exactly what I said, too, on'y the words came different."

"If he finks we're goin' all that way round twice a day, he's jolly w'ong," remarked Sandy injuredly. "We'd have to start hours an' hours earlier-not us!"

Again the door opened, and a tall man came in, whose first look of anxious inquiry was directed towards the table where his papers were lying. Sandy's impatient elbow was dug into the middle of them, as he fidgeted about on one leg. Mr. Bethune sat down in the three-cornered chair before the table, and rescued his papers, at the same time keeping Sandy by his side.

"So you two have been in mischief again?" he said gently, looking gravely at his sons.

"I'm afraid David has been rude, too," put in the mother, a little anxiously.

David, with a put-on air of unconcern, looked out of the window, where two more sturdy boys, younger, but made after the same pattern as the two inside, were now visible on the garden path. They were dilatorily obeying a call from Marjorie, and making for the window.

"I have had a letter," went on Mr. Bethune. "It's a nice letter, and what Mr. Pelham says is reasonable."

"Bounder!" muttered David, and Sandy said "Beast!"

The father lifted his eyes from the letter.

"You will have to apologise. Mr. Pelham is quite right. You have no business there. I will write a letter, and you will take it. Marjorie, will you see if tea is ready?" in a fatigued tone. "Mother looks tired out."

"Come, boys," said Marjorie. And the clamour that immediately ensued round the tea-table in the next room showed that rebellion and anarchy were in the air.

When they had gone their father laughed quietly.

"It is a nice letter. I expect they will find he will give them leave, if they behave themselves. But they have been playing tricks on the workmen-and on his servants, as I gather."

"They are always in mischief," said their mother, and her tone was not the tone of one who lamented. "But they are not generally rude. I am afraid they have heard the things that are being said against this man. Perhaps Marjorie had better go with them? He will not be rude to her?"

"No. 'This man,' as you call him, is one of the Pelhams of Lente. Yes, she can take them. Mrs. Lytchett was suggesting to me just now that she was growing up, and that she ought to have some lessons--"

"I wish Mrs. Lytchett would mind her own business!" flashed out the mother. "Marjorie is as well educated as she is, though I should be sorry to see her so meddlesome."

Then her ill-temper vanished, and she smiled serenely.

"Marjorie was writing a sonnet on Love whilst you were at church. She seemed quite equal to the composition, but lacked facts."

"Marjorie's lack of facts doesn't often curb her imagination," her father said. "I do not think it was her education that Mrs. Lytchett thought wanted improving-though it does-but her deportment, whatever that is, and-and manners."

"She carries herself like a queen," asserted her mother, "even though she is thin and awkward yet. And her manners-should you wish them altered, father?"

"She is ours, my dear," he said tenderly; "and I think her simplicity natural and charming. But perhaps she has said something-she does sometimes-to Mrs. Lytchett."

"She does often. Mrs. Lytchett was here yesterday. I know she is good, but she is irritating, John. She condoled with me about your litter, and wondered if I couldn't arrange a room for you up in the attics. And she said she was sure all the boys were behaving badly in church on Sunday afternoon-and why didn't Marjorie sit between them, instead of at the end of the pew, where the corner was a temptation to her to lounge? And then she made a set at the stocking basket, and criticised the darning, and pitied us dreadfully for so many boys, all with knees, as well as red heads. And then Marjorie broke out. She thought the heads were beautiful, also the knees, and that the boys behaved in church like saints; and that you'd be miserable in the attics without me-though she could understand that with a nagging woman always about a man must have somewhere to hide himself."

"I hope Marjorie won't turn into a virago," her father said anxiously, after a pause. "That was rude, even if it were true. She is cramped here-it is a cramping place; and we are to blame-we put too much upon her."

He sighed, and rose to take his wife's cup, and then stretched himself before the fireless grate. "She has a dangerous gift of imagination. Will she ever be satisfied with Warde? I have told him he may speak now. But she is a child still, she has no idea--" he paused.

An inroad of boys, come to be inspected by their mother before starting on their errand, brought their father back to the table and the letter they were to take. Sandy, balancing on the arm of his chair, superintended its composition.

"Father's put 'Dear Sir,' 'stead of 'Horrid Fellow,'" he announced aloud to the others. They were standing round the table; the smallest of them, aged three, could just rest his chin upon it, and was listening in solemn admiration of Sandy's sentiments.

"Are you going to take all this horde with you, Marjorie?" her mother asked, her observant eyes glancing from collar to collar and from boot to boot.

"Yes, mother; I thought it would economise matters. They're all mischievous, and will need apologising for some time; it is such a convenient way to school."

"'My little sons will, I hope, make their 'pologies in person for their rudeness. I am extwemely sorry--'" sang out Sandy, raising himself on his elbows, dug into the table, the better to see what his father was writing.

"Don't put 'little,' father," he pleaded; "he'll think it's Ross or Orme, 'stead of us."

"I suppose you know what an apology is, Sandy?" Mr. Bethune bethought himself to inquire as he finished writing, and looked down at the curly head bobbing across his arm.

"Ought to," grunted Sandy, panting in his efforts to plant his toes between the spokes of his father's chair. "Never do so no more-till next time."

"If it is that, I shall be sorry, Sandy, in this case, because this gentleman's a stranger."

"Oh," said Sandy, dropping to the floor and glancing up into the grave blue eyes, of which his own were an exact reproduction, without the gravity.

"You look as if you had been in mischief," she remarked.-p. 67.

"'Pologies is funny things," he said, pensively. "Mrs. Lytchett said we ought to be whipped when we made the peacocks scream, an' we 'pologises; and Charity boxed Dave's ears for treadin' on her fine new frock, an' he 'pologised-an' the Dean 'pologised back for her crossness. An' now, seems as if 'pologies did 'stead of leavin' off doin' what you want. Them peacocks screamed again to-day at dinner-time, an' to-morrer we--"

A quick frown from his elder brother stopped the admission that was coming.

"Your morality, your deductions, and your grammar are equally matched, Sandy," said his father. "Who is going to carry this letter?"

"Me, me!" implored the baby, advancing a chubby hand, plucked from his mouth for the purpose. He looked like one of Sir Joshua's cherubs-nothing visible of him over the edge of the table but a round moon face of exquisite fairness, with a large background of soft white hat instead of cloud.

"You'll see that the boys behave and apologise properly, Marjorie," her father said, sinking back into his chair with such an expression of peace on his face as quite compensated his young daughter for the annoyance of the errand on which she was conducting her young brothers.