‘But, Daisy dear, he is your brother!’
‘I’ve got plenty of brothers of my own! I don’t count those people-in-law—’
‘She’s past reasoning with, Mary,’ said Ethel. ‘Leave her to me; she will come to her senses by and by!’
‘But indeed, Ethel, you won’t be hard on her? I am sure dear Charles never thought what he said would have been taken in this way.’
‘Why did he say it then?’ cried Gertrude, firing up.
‘My dear Mary, do please go down, before we get into the pitiable last-word condition!’
That condition was reached already; but in Ethel’s own bedroom Mary’s implicit obedience revived, and away she went, carrying off with her most of what was naughtiness in Gertrude.
‘Ethel—Ethel dear!’ cried she at once, ‘I know you are coming down on me. I deserve it all, only Charles had no business to say it. And wasn’t it very cruel and unkind when he saw the state I was in?’
‘I suppose Charles thought it was the only chance of giving a lesson, and therefore true kindness. Come, Daisy, is this terrible fit of pride a proper return for such a mercy as we have had to-day?’
‘If I didn’t say so to myself a dozen times on the way home!—only Mary came and made me so intolerably angry, by expecting me to take it as if it had come from you or papa.’
‘Ah, Daisy, that is the evil! If I had done my duty by you all, this would not have been!’
‘Now, Ethel, when you want to be worse, and more cutting than anything, you go and tell me my faults are yours! For pity’s sake, don’t come to that!’
‘But I must, Daisy, for it is true. Oh, if you had only been a naughty little girl!’
‘What—and had it out then?’ said Daisy, who was lying across the bed, and put her golden head caressingly on Ethel’s knee. ‘If I had plagued you then, you would have broken me in out of self-defence.’
‘Something like it,’ said Ethel. ‘But you know, Daisy, the little last treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not make enough of, and it didn’t make you fractious or tiresome—at least not to us—till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I didn’t see the little faults so soon as I ought; and I’m only an elder sister, after all, without any authority.’
‘No, you’re not to say that, Ethel, I mind your authority, and always will. You are never a bother.’
‘Ah, that’s it, Daisy! If I had only been a bother, you might never have got ahead of yourself.’
‘Then you really think, like Charles Cheviot, that it was my doing, Ethel?’
‘What do you think yourself?’
Great tears gathered in the corners of the blue eyes. Was it weak in Ethel not to bear the sight?
‘My poor Daisy,’ she said, ‘yours is not all the burden! I ought not to have taken up such a giddy company, or else I should have kept the boy under my hand. But he is so discreet and independent, that it is more like having a gentleman staying in the house, than a child under one’s charge; and one forgets how little he is; and I was as much off my balance with spirits as you. It was the flightiness of us all; and we have only to be thankful, and to be sobered for another time. I am afraid the pride about being reproved is really the worse fault.’
‘And what do you want me to do?—to go and tell papa all about it? I mean to do that, of course; it is the only way to get comforted.’
‘Of course it is; but—’
‘You horrid creature, Ethel! I’ll never say you aren’t a bother again. You really do want me to go and tell Charles Cheviot that he was quite right, and Mary that I’m ready to be trampled on by all my brothers-in-law in a row! Well, there won’t be any more. You’ll never give me one—that’s one comfort!’ said Gertrude, wriggling herself up, and flinging an arm round Ethel’s neck. ‘As long as you don’t do that, I’ll do anything for you.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Well, you know that, you old thing! only you might take it as a personal compliment. I really will do it; for, of course, one could not keep one’s Christmas otherwise!’ It was rather too business-like; but elders are often surprised to find what was a hard achievement in their time a matter of course to their pupils—almost lightly passed over.
Dickie slept till morning, when he was found very pale, but lively and good-humoured as ever. Mr. Wright, coming up to see him, found the hurt going on well, and told Ethel, that if she could keep him in bed and undisturbed for the day, it would be better and safer; but that if he became restless and fretful, there would be no great risk in taking him to a sofa. Restless and fretful! Mr. Wright little knew the discretion, or the happy power of accommodation to circumstances, that had descended to Meta’s firstborn.
He was quite resigned as soon as the explanation had been made—perhaps, indeed, there was an instinctive sense, that to be dressed and moved would be fatiguing; but he had plenty of smiles and animation for his visitors, and, when propped up in bed, was full of devices for occupation. Moreover he acquired a slave; he made a regular appropriation of Leonard, whom he quickly perceived to be the most likely person to assist in his great design of constructing a model of the clock in the Minster tower, for the edification of his little brother Harry. Leonard worked away at the table by the bedside with interest nearly equal to the child’s; and when wire and cardboard were wanting, he put aside all his dislike to facing the Stoneborough streets and tradesmen in open day, and, at Dickie’s request, sallied forth in quest of the materials. And when the bookseller made inquiries after the boy, Leonard, in the fulness of his heart, replied freely and in detail—nay, he was so happy in the little man’s well-doing, that he was by no means disconcerted even by a full encounter of Mrs. Harvey Anderson in the street, but answered all her inquiries, in entire oblivion of all but the general rejoicing in little Dickie’s wonderful escape.
‘Well,’ said Aubrey to his sisters, after a visit to his nephew’s room, ‘Dickie has the best right to him, certainly, to-day. It is an absolute appropriation! They were talking away with all their might when I came up, but came to a stop when I went in, and Master Dick sent me to the right-about.’
The truth was, that Dickie, who, with eyes and ears all alive, had gathered up some fragments of Leonard’s history, had taken this opportunity of catechizing him upon it in a manner that it was impossible to elude, and which the child’s pretty tact carried off, as it did many things which would not have been tolerated if done rudely and
