The Quiver, Annual Volume 10/1899

Mr. Graydon and his daughter Pamela were jogging leisurely home from the little market town of Lettergort. There was no reason to hurry, and if there had been, Frisky, the little fat pony, whose frisky days were long over, would not have been aware of it.

It was very hot, a morning of late summer; but Pamela's creamy cheeks were as cool as the firm petals of a lily. She bore as if accustomed to it the jog-trot of the pony and the frequent ruts into which their chariot bumped, flinging her from the seat as though she were the football in a hotly contested game.

Mr. Graydon kept up a contented whistling when he was not commenting on the fields and the cattle as they passed. That had been a long, hot summer, and for once in a century people had begun to long for the patter of rain on the leaves.

"Woa, Frisky-woa, little lad! That's a nice colt of Whelan's down there by the sally-tree. Do you see, Pam? Now, I hope the poor fellow will get a handful of money for it. He'll need it this summer," Mr. Graydon would say.

Or, again, it would be a farmer going their own way from Lettergort.

"Good-morning, John."

"Good-morning, your honour. How did the calves do wid your honour?"

"I'm not complaining, John. Murray of Slievenahoola gave me thirty shillings apiece for them. It was as much as I hoped for."

"Aye, they wor but weanlin's. An' 'tis no use keepin' stock this summer."

"How did you do with the heifers, John?"

"Didn't get the price of their feed, your honour. Wirra! 'tis a desperate summer. The hay wasn't worth cuttin', and the oats is pitiful."

Again, it would be a labourer with a scythe on his shoulder whom Mr. Graydon would stop to ask after his household concerns. Everywhere they passed a smile followed Mr. Graydon's broad back in its faded homespuns.

"'Tis a rale pleasant word he has in his mouth, God bless him! an' him a rale gentleman an' all," followed him from many a cottage-door.

"You've done your marketing, Pam," said her father, turning to her.

"I'd plenty of time, dad, while you chatted to your million acquaintances."

"And sold my calves, Pam."

"You might have sold a thousand in the time."

"Well, well, Pam, it is my little world, you see. I hope the perishable things won't be broken when we come to the rut by Murphy's gate. 'Tis a foot and a half deep at least. Johnny Maher ought really to mend this road."

"You ought to make him, dad. What's the good of being a magistrate?"

"What indeed, Pam! Sure, I never get a job done for myself. There's old Inverbarry now, and he a lord, and he's getting the private road through his park mended at the public expense. And he as rich as Cr?sus, the old sinner!"

Mr. Graydon rubbed his hands with benevolent amusement. His daughter glanced at him with a pucker between her white brows. The violet-blue eyes under curling black lashes exactly reproduced her father's, though at this moment the expressions were widely different.

"You're too easy-going, dad. You should make Johnny Maher mend the road."

Mr. Graydon dropped a rein to pull one of his daughter's silky black curls.

"You wouldn't be having me too hard on the poor fellow, and he with a sick wife and an old mother and a pack of children. Eh, little Pam?"

Pamela shook her head severely, and the red mouth, which had drooped at the corners when she was serious, parted over white teeth in a laugh fresh as a child's.

"How did the calves do wid your honour?"

"You've no conscience, dad, any more than Lord Inverbarry or Johnny Maher. You're conniving at their wrongdoing, you see."

"Maybe I am, Pam-maybe I am. Only I don't suppose it seems wrongdoing to them-at least, not to Johnny Maher, poor fellow. Inverbarry ought to know better."

They jogged along for a few minutes till there was another jolt. Simultaneously there was a crash at their feet, and Mr. Graydon pulled up with an exclamation.

"There goes some of your crockery, Pam. I hope it's not the lad's looking-glass."

"Never mind," said Pam, with a sigh of despair. "Perhaps now you'll get Johnny Maher to see to the road. If it's his looking-glass, he'll have to shave as Mick St. Leger used, with the lid of a can for his looking-glass."

"Ah, poor Mick was used to our ways. He didn't mind. But this is a public-school man. We'll have to furbish up for him, little Pam, and put our best foot foremost, eh?"

"It looks like it," said Pam, gazing down at the jumbled parcels at her feet. "I'll tell you what it is," she said: "it's the glass for his bedroom window. It is all in smithereens. He'll have to put up with the brown-paper panes, as Mick St. Leger did."

"Never mind, never mind. The lad's a gentleman, and he'll see we're gentlefolk, though we're as poor as church mice. He won't mind, you'll see, Pam; gentlemen never do mind these things."

"You're thinking of Mick still, dad. You forget that Gwynne man who wouldn't stay because he got nothing but potatoes for three days. As if we could help the roads being frozen and Frisky not being able to get to Lettergort! Do you remember Gwynne's face over the potato-cake the third day? Yet I'm sure Bridget had done her best. What with potatoes in their jackets, and mashed, and with butter, and without, and in a salad, and at last in a cake, I'm sure there was no sameness about the diet."

"Gwynne was a-well, of course, he was a gentleman, but as disagreeable as a gentleman can be. Besides, Pam, potatoes probably didn't agree with him; they don't with everyone, you know, and Gwynne was dyspeptic. I don't know what the lads are coming to. In my young days we didn't even know the word dyspepsia, much less the thing."

"Gwynne was hateful," said Pamela. "He expected us to kill the chickens for him when every single chicken was a pet, and so tame, dear things! that they would walk into the drawing-room and perch on your knee."

"Perhaps that's why Gwynne wanted them killed," said Mr. Graydon.

"Nasty thing!" said Pamela. "I was glad when we saw his back. He couldn't bear the dear dogs lying on his bed either, though Mary told him it was a proof of their friendliness towards him. He fired his bootjack after Mark Antony, you remember, and though it's not easy to stir up Mark Antony, yet I'm glad he had the spirit to go for Gwynne's legs."

"Mark Antony had been burying bones under Gwynne's pillow, my dear."

"Only because it was a wet day, and he never liked to go out in the rain. I daresay if he'd had time he'd have removed the bones to the garden. However, I don't suppose this youth will be like Gwynne. What do you think, dad?"

"His father was the best fellow ever stepped on shoe-leather. If the lad is like him, we shan't complain. What a handsome, dashing fellow he was! I can see him now in his scarlet and gold lace that night at Lady Westbury's ball, where I first met--"

He broke off suddenly with a little sigh. "That was another world, Pam."

"A world well lost-was it not?-dad."

"Aye, a world well lost, little girl."

It was plain to see that a tender intimacy existed between this father and daughter.

"I daresay he'll find my ways rather old-fashioned, Pam. It was an odd thing that his father should have remembered me, and have wished the lad to come to me."

"It would have been odd if he hadn't," said Pam shortly.

"There are new ways and new methods in the world since I was at Oxford. I daresay the lad'll find me rather rusty in my knowledge."

"You'll teach over his head, as you always do, and you'll get great delight out of it. You'll forget all about your pupil, and you'll go mouthing Greek poetry till we think downstairs that the study chimney is on fire. And while you're growling and thundering the youth will be making caricatures of you under the table, or cutting his name deep in the oak of your precious study table."

"Is that my way, little Pam?"

"That's your way, dad. There was never one of your pupils that could follow you, only little Sells, and he died young, poor boy!"

"Ah, little Sells. I am proud of Sells. He died fighting the small-pox with all the heroic soul in his little body. He had the making of a fine scholar."

"Never mind, dad. None of us can do more than die heroically. And Sells would always have been a poor curate. They'd never have made him a bishop."

"I suppose not, poor lad! Scholarship doesn't count for much, Pam."

"Or you wouldn't be here, dad."

"I'd always be in the ruck, Pam; I'm afraid I'm a worthless old fellow. From what you say, Pam, I'm as much of a failure at the teaching as anything else. I'm really afraid it's true."

"Never mind, dad. As Mick St. Leger said, you taught them better things. It isn't your fault that you're over their heads."

"Did poor Mick say that, now?" said Mr. Graydon, answering the first part of her sentence. "Mick was a good boy; but no scholarship in him. A child could beat Mick at the Greek verbs."

"He was more at home with a rod or a gun," assented Pamela. "Only for the noise he made you'd never know he was in the house. There was no fun he wasn't up to."

Mr. Graydon's face suddenly became serious.

"You'll remember this lad's not Mick, Pam," he said; "you and Sylvia, I mean, for, of course, Mary is always prudent. Don't behave with him as if you were all boys together. Now, that locking Mick in the hayloft, or going with him to Whiddy Fair, would never do with this boy."

"That was five years ago, dad," answered Pamela, looking with a demure smile at the hem of her pink cotton frock where it covered her shoes. "We were wild little colts of girls, then, with our hair down our backs. Besides, we never meant to leave Mick in the hayloft; we only forgot he was there in the delight of finding a wild bees' nest; and we cried coming home from Whiddy Fair, we were so tired and so hungry."

"Till I overtook you with Frisky, and drove you home and comforted you."

"You should have spanked us, dad, and sent Mick to the right-about."

"So I should. If you'd been boys, I daresay I'd have known a better way with you. But what can one do with little girls? Then poor Mick. I knew it wasn't Mick's fault. You'd been leading him astray, as usual."

But Frisky had pulled up suddenly at a rather dilapidated gate, with a post falling to pieces, and the two halves of the gate fastened together with a piece of string. Out of the lodge within poured a stream of blue-eyed and chubby children, who stood regarding Frisky and his freight with shy and friendly smiles.

"Halloa, you rascals," called out Mr. Graydon, "run and call your mother, some of you. Gone with your father's dinner, is she? She seems to be always gone with your father's dinner. You can't get down to open the gate, Pam? No, I see you can't; you're built in with parcels round your feet. Here, take the reins, and I'll get down myself. Only don't let Frisky get his head, or he'll run off with the other post, as he did with that one."

"Frisky is not likely to do that, dad. He's got more sedate since those days. It was about the same time that Sylvia and I locked Mick in the hayloft."

"Five years ago, Pam? It can't be five years ago. I'd never have left that post unmended five years. Why, it was only the other day I was saying I'd have over the mason from Lettergort to mend it."

He had now done fumbling with the tie of the gate, and Pamela drove into the overgrown avenue. While he was replacing the bit of string he kept up a running fire of jests with the small, shame-faced children, to which she listened with a half-smile.

"Dear old dad," she said to herself. "He has been so long letting things go that he even forgets that he has let them go. And I'm his own daughter."

She took up a breadth of her pink frock and looked at it. There was a rent of at least three inches in it. Pamela shook her head in mute self-reproach.

"It'll never do for 'Trevithick's lad,' as the dear dad calls him. I don't suppose he's used to young women with rents in their frocks. And I am a young woman, and so is Sylvia, though our own father has never found it out."

As she sat waiting, a dreamy smile came to her lips and a softness to her eyes. It was like a prophecy of what "Trevithick's lad" was to bring-like the dawn of love, sweet and bitter, that was to bring Pam the hoyden into her woman's inheritance.

"Come along, dear," she said with a start, turning to her father: it seemed as if his head-pattings of the children would never come to an end. "Frisky's getting uneasy, and will bolt with me and the crockery, if you don't hurry up."

Her father jumped into the little cart with a laugh.

"I forgot that you were waiting, Pam, those infants have such pleasing ways. But as for Frisky running away with you, why, bless me! he's had time to get old since he ran away with the post; at least, so you say, though I should never have believed it-never!"

"And now," said Pam, "you're going to be turned out of house and home for the next few days. Unhappy man, you little know how you've carried soap and scrubbing brushes for your own destruction."

Mr. Graydon gave a gasp of genuine alarm.

"Soap and scrubbing brushes! But what for, Pam? I am sure everything is very clean-except my books; and I won't have the books touched, mind that-I won't have my books touched."

"Indeed, then, and I'd advise you to say that to Bridget yourself, for I'm sure I won't. She's taken a fit of industry, and says she might as well be living among haythens, wid th' ould dust an' dirt the masther's for ever gatherin'. 'Them ould books of his,' she says, 'would be a dale better for a rub of a damp cloth, and then a polish up wid a duster.'"

"Pam!" cried the unhappy gentleman. "She wouldn't dare put a damp cloth near my books."

"She'd dare most things, would Bridget. It's your vellum covers she's after chiefly. She says they're unnaturally dirty."

She looked at the beloved face, which bore a look of genuine dismay over its genial ruddiness.

"Never mind, dad," she said. "Bridget promises great things; but between you and me I believe the great clearing up will just end in what she herself calls a lick and a promise. I don't suppose she'll ever get so far as your possessions-I don't really believe she will."

"Don't let her, Pamela darling, will you?" said her father entreatingly. "Why, good gracious! my classics in vellum! A damp cloth! And Bridget's damp cloth! It would be enough to send me to an asylum."

"Come along," she said.

"When I was at Lord Carrickmines's," began Bridget.

"Bother Lord Carrickmines!" said Miss Sylvia Graydon. "We know everything that happened at Lord Carrickmines', and that can't have been much, seeing you've lived in this house since before I was born."

"When I was at Lord Carrickmines's," went on Bridget with a kindling eye, "the young ladies-and sweet young ladies they were, Miss Mabel and Miss Alice-would have scorned to sit on the kitchen table swingin' their feet an' givin' advice they worn't asked for when there was work to be done in the house. They were more likely to come an' help--"

"In their pink and blue silks, Bridget dear. You know they always wore pink and blue silks. Besides, I only advised you for your good. You're going the wrong way entirely about mending that chair. The first time Sir Anthony sits on it he'll go flat on the floor."

"Well, then, it won't be you'll go flat on the floor, Miss Sylvy, so you needn't be talkin' about it. There, bother the thing! The more nails I drives in it the more it splits, till the cracks in it is like the spokes of a wheel. I believe 'tis you sittin' there givin' me impudence, Miss Sylvy. Sure it's the contrary ould thing entirely. I wish I'd never bothered after it."

"Why did you, then? Why can't he sit on his trunk, as Mick used to do? I'm sure he can't be better than Mick."

"There's a deal o' differ, Miss Sylvy, between the rank of a 'Sir' an' the rank of a meleetia leftenant, though Mr. St. Leger was a real nice young gentleman, when not led into mischief by you or Miss Pamela. You see, I learnt the differ when I was at Lord--"

"I'll tell you what, Bridget," said Miss Sylvia, jumping off the table, "I'll go and pick currants in the garden. You were saying yesterday they were dropping off their stalks for want of picking."

"Aye, do, dearie. I'll be makin' jam as soon as I get this weary cleanin' done, an' you'll help me with the stirrin', Miss Sylvy, an' write the labels for me?"

"That I will, Bridget, on condition you give me a pot for myself."

Bridget looked fondly after the slender young figure as it went out in the sunlight, followed by a very fat bull-dog which had been basking before the fire.

"There," she said to herself, "Miss Sylvy's real willin', if you only take her the right way. Sure, as I was sayin' to the master the other day, you'd never miss a young gentleman in the house as long as you'd Miss Sylvy. Miss Pamela's real pleasant, too, but give me Miss Sylvy, for all she's more like a boy nor a girl. But there, a household of females is apt to weigh on the spirits, as I say, so it's well we have Miss Sylvy, for the master's ever abroad or shut up wid his musty ould books."

At this moment a lieutenant of Bridget's appeared on the scene. This was Mrs. Murphy, a stout village matron, who had been brought in to assist in the great cleaning up, preparatory to the arrival of the new pupil.

The good woman was steaming like her suds, of which she carried a very dirty bucketful.

"Well, that job's done," she observed, "an' the room ought to be clane enough to sarve him another twelvemonth. I don't know what the gentry wants wid all the clanin' at all. 'Tis meself wouldn't like ould buckets o' suds rowled round the flure o' my little room at home. They say washin' flures is the cause of a many coulds. How is the work wid ye, ma'am?"

"I'm not progressin' much, ma'am. I was just tellin' Miss Sylvy that it was her sittin' and laughin' at me was puttin' out my hand. Sit down for a minute, ma'am, an' have a noggin o' buttermilk to cool ye. There's time enough to be pullin' up the master's ould carpet that hasn't been up in the memory o' man. He won't be home this hour yet."

"Gentlemen doesn't like clanin' times, Miss Flanagan," Mrs. Murphy observed, as she seated herself.

"Indeed, they're contrairy cratures, like all men. They like claneness, but they don't like to be claned. See how they're always moppin' themselves in could baths enough to give them their end, and yet water about their rooms is somethin' they can't endure. When I was at Lord Carrickmines's, the housekeeper put me, as it might be you, ma'am, to pelt an ould bucket o' water round his lordship's studio. He was a hasty man, an' he caught sight o' me enterin' the door-oh, bedad! he took the ould blunderbuss an' promised me the contints of it if I didn't quit."

"The master here's rale quiet, though. He won't be for murdherin' you, glory be to goodness!"

"I daresay he'll raise a pillalew all the time," said Bridget philosophically, "but 'tis no use mindin' him."

"Yez have great preparations anyway, an' people's comfort all out o' the windy. I suppose 'tis a rale grand young gentleman yez are gettin'?"

"Well enough, well enough," said Bridget loftily. "He's what ye call a baronite."

"Rowlin' in gould, I suppose?"

"Well, then, ma'am, I was never curious enough to ax his fortin'."

Undeterred by this glaring snub, Mrs. Murphy went on placidly:

"He'll be a fine match for wan o' the young ladies."

"He might be," assented Bridget, as if she had thought of it for the first time.

"Miss Sylvy now'll dazzle the eyes of him wid beauty. I wouldn't ask a greater beauty meself if I wor a young gentleman."

"Oh, the beauty's there, never fear. You wouldn't find a sweeter angel than Miss Sylvy sittin' up in church on Sunday, wid the feathery hat she made herself, poor lamb. The little face of her, and the big shiny eyes, an' the darlin' hair puffed out about her. Och, indeed, you'd go a long way to bate Miss Sylvia in beauty."

"So the young gentleman'll think, I'll be bound."

"Indeed, then, I hope he won't be wastin' his time, for if he was to come makin' love to Miss Sylvy, 'tis as like as not she'd make a face at him."

"Well, then, it'll be Miss Pamela."

"May be, may be. Anyhow, it won't be Miss Sylvy, for she's just an imp of mischief, for all she has the face of an angel. The master calls her 'Boy.' 'I was lookin' for a boy,' says he, 'an' 'twas herself that come. But sure, after all,' says he, 'I'm not sure 'twas any mistake at all, at all.'"

"And now, Mrs. Murphy," said Bridget, with a sudden return to authority, "I'd be obliged to you if it was your work you was gettin' about, an' not sittin' here idlin' all day. Stir your lazy bones, woman, an' be off to the master's studio, or 'tis never done 'twill be at all."

"Well, indeed, ma'am," said Mrs. Murphy, with a justly aggrieved air. "Here I wouldn't be at all, exceptin' by your own invitation."

"Gentlemen doesn't like clanin' times, Miss Flanagan."

Bridget hurried upstairs through the quiet house flooded with morning sunshine. Carrickmoyle stood on a plateau, and looked away over the bleached country and the summer-dark coppices. It was a square house, kindly of aspect, despite its ruinous condition, and around it lay a rich old garden, full of damask roses and such wealth of fruit as only come with years to a garden.

An orchard, gnarled and overgrown, was down in the hollow. A delightful place it was to dream away a summer day, with no sound to break the stillness save only the moan of the wood-dove or the dropping of ripe fruit.

As Bridget went upstairs she paused at a window. Below her, flitting here and there through the raspberry canes and currant bushes, she caught a glimpse of Sylvia's blue frock.

"There she is, the lamb," muttered the old woman, her face softening. "There she is, wid that Mark Antony at her heels, helpin' himself to the raspberries, I'll be bound. An' she, pretty lamb! 'tis more she'll be atin' thin pickin', I'm thinkin'. But never mind, never mind, we can't be young but wance."

In the room intended for the new pupil Mary Graydon, the eldest of the three girls, was sitting, puckering her forehead over a mass of muslin that overflowed her lap.

"What are you in trouble about, Miss Mary?" asked Bridget.

"I don't know how to cut this into curtains for the window at all, Bridget dear," said the sweetest, most plaintive voice; "it's so narrow and the window so wide."

"What have you got at all, child? 'Tisn't your poor mamma's muslin slips?"

"It is indeed, Bridget. They were only going to pieces where they were, and we can't afford curtains, and I'm sure if mamma was alive she'd tell me to 'take them.'"

"Indeed, then, I'm sure she would, Miss Mary, for she was like yourself; she'd give the clothes off her back to anyone she thought wanted them worse. Give me the scissors, jewel, an' I'll just cut them out for you. I once got a prize in Major Healy's lady's sewin'-class for cuttin'-out when I was a girl; though you'd never believe it, to see the botch I made of the chair I was tryin' to mend."

"It isn't quite the same thing, Bridget, you know. Oh! thank you, that is clever. How are you getting on downstairs?"

"Pretty well, Miss Mary, but 'tis aisy does it wid that woman, Mrs. Murphy. She's a great ould gossip of a woman; 'tis no wonder Tim an' the childher are the shows of the place. I was hard put to it to shut her mouth-her tongue's longer thin my arm-an' get her to the master's studio before he came home."

"Oh, poor papa! You're surely not invading him, Bridget?"

"Aye, am I. The woman's up to her shoulders in dirty soap-suds by this time, unless she's found someone more ready to listen to her thin I was. There, Miss Mary, there's the curtain; I've made a nate job of it, haven't I?"

"You have indeed, Bridget. I wish you'd teach me some of your cleverness."

"Arrah! what would you want with the like? Sure, 'tis only by rayson of a little inconvaynience that rale blood-ladies like yourselves has to lift your hands, if it was only to wash your faces."

Mary Graydon shook her head. Hers was a face which seemed irradiated with a quiet inward light, and her eyes were gentler than the eyes of doves.

"You must teach me all you know, Bridget, for I shall always be poor."

"You mane when you marry Mr. St. Leger, Miss Mary?"

The girl nodded without speaking, but a sudden rush of happy colour covered her innocent face.

"Don't be thinkin' of that, my lamb. The ould lord'll come round before that. Sure he couldn't be as hard-hearted a naygur as he lets on."

"I'm afraid not, Bridget. He has a little son of his own now, you see, and so the less reason for forgiving papa."

Bridget lifted her eyes and hands.

"Him wid a little son indeed! Cock him up wid a little son, an' him wid wan foot in the grave! Well, there's no gettin' over the ways of some people. But 'tis time for me to be gettin' about my work, or I'll be as bad as that Murphy woman. Just you call to me, Miss Mary, if you want to know anything; but don't go spoiling them eyes on Mr. Mick, puttin' too fine work into that baronite's curtains."

She went off then, and for a time there was silence in the room, broken only by the occasional efforts of Pamela's Irish terrier, Pat, to better Bridget's bed-making. The windows, brown-paper panes and all, were flung wide open, and there was a lovely prospect of plain and hill, and wood and river, stretching away into the pearl-grey distances. A little wind sang like a lullaby in the leaves of the sycamore outside the window, and from the garden below came a drowsy humming of bees.

But to the girl who sat there dreaming dreams a scene widely different presented itself. She saw a parched Indian plain and a row of low white buildings. All around there was a clearing, but beyond was the mass of the jungle, where the jackals cried by night and the lions roared thunderously. Somewhere in that baking place she saw the face she loved-the plain, honest, devoted face of Mick St. Leger, who had passed from the Militia to be a subaltern in a marching regiment. Five years at least would elapse before he came home-five years, with all their chances of trouble and loneliness, and, alas! of death.

Mary Graydon trembled over her sewing as the longing for her lover became almost intolerable. Then she snapped a thread off short, and lifted her eyes in a quiet way which had become natural to her when she was alone. She could not know what was happening to her dear boy under those deadly skies; but there was One who knew and whose love was greater still, and she could trust that love even if its will was to slay her.

There was a quick step on the stones, and the sound of someone rushing up two steps at a time.

"Oh! here you are, Molly," cried Pamela, rushing in breathless. "We've got home, papa and I; and the glass for these windows is all in a smash, and three of the new tumblers, and the youth's shaving-glass. And what do you think, darling? The youth's coming to-day-this afternoon. That dear old dunderhead of a father of ours has been reading 'Thursday' for 'Tuesday,' and has just had a telegram to undeceive him."

Mary lifted her hands in dismay.

"Dad's to meet him at Lettergort at four-thirty. It's just as well it happened, anyhow, for, instead of going into his study to read the Sentinel, I've headed him off for the stables to see if Frisky must have a shoe. So he hasn't discovered yet the terrible havoc among his household gods. Maybe, if we can get things to rights before he finds out, he'll never know his room has been cleaned at all, at all. I'm sure Mrs. Murphy will leave as few traces of the cleaning as possible."

"What are we to do, Pam?"

"Why, do nothing. It's just as well the glass is broken, for there'd be no time to put it in. Besides, I'm of Bridget's opinion, that brown paper's a deal comfortabler-looking in the could weather."

"But his dinner, Pamela?"

"Why, kill the red cock. He's been insufferable, strutting about with his hoarse crow, since he killed my dear bantam. Besides, he can't live much longer; you know he's very old."

"But won't he be tough? Besides, how are we to catch him?"

"As to the toughness, the youth will think it's the habit of Irish fowl. As to catching him, I think he might be trapped in the rose-bush opposite the hall-door, where he and his wives have taken to roosting; and a nice thing they've made of the rose-bush. He's so old, poor dear! that he goes to bed while yet the sun's high; but, mind, I'll have nothing to say to catching him, lest it should savour of revenge for my Dick."

"But, Pam, the house is upside down; and Sir Anthony comes at four-thirty, you say?"

"Four-thirty his train is due. But papa must take him a round that'll keep him till seven. You may trust Frisky, if Frisky gets a chance, though in the ordinary course of things they'd arrive here from Lettergort in half an hour. Then the train may be more late than usual, to oblige us."

"I suppose papa must keep him out?"

"Yes, of course, he must. It's an interesting country and a charming day. Later on, of course, he'll find out that Lettergort Station is only round the corner, so to speak; but he'll think the long drive was an aberration of his Irish host."

"But won't he be tired after his long journey?"

"He'll be more tired if he has to help us to catch the red cock; that is, if we don't succeed in surprising the poor thing."

"Yes, I suppose we'll have to ask papa to do that. And Pam, darling, do run down and see what Mrs. Murphy is doing in the poor dear's study. He has always been so happy there that it's a shame to disturb him with the knowledge that it has been invaded."

"Leave that to me. You'd say I was a born general if you saw the way I headed him off when he came in. I'll lock Mrs. Murphy in, if necessary, and then make a prodigious search for the key."

"Don't do that, Pam, darling."

"Only as a last resource. Never you fear, I'll keep the poor darling's mind undisturbed. You'll see he never suspects anything, even when I ask him at lunch where I shall find the quotation, 'Alas, unconscious of their doom, the little infants play.'"

And Pamela did ask him at lunch, and the poor gentleman gave her innocently the information she asked. Though, as she said afterwards, it was a shame to keep him in the dark, for he loved a joke so dearly that he would have enjoyed one even at his own expense.

Mary lifted her hands in dismay.

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.