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 passed 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 tassels 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?
Babie confided her feelings to Jock when he escorted her to Church in the evening, and had detected a melancholy sound in her voice which made him ask if she thought Armine's attack of the worst sort.
'Not particularly, except that he talks so beautifully.'
Jock gave a small sympathetic whistle at this dreadful symptom, and wondered to hear that he had been able to talk.
'I didn't mean only to-day, but this is only what he had made up his mind to. He never expects to leave Belforest, and he thinks-oh, Jock!-he thinks it is meant to do Bobus good.'
'He doesn't go the way to edify Bobus.'
'No, but don't you see? That is what is so dreadful. He only just reads with Bobus because mother ordered him; and he hates it because he thinks it is of no use, for he will never be well enough to go to college. Why, he had this cold coming yesterday, and I believe he is glad, for it would be like a book for him to be very bad indeed, bad enough to be able to speak out to Bobus without being laughed at.'
'Does he always go on in this way?'
'Not to mother; but to hear him and Miss Parsons is enough to drive one wild. They went on such a dreadful way yesterday that I was furious, and so glad to get away to Kenminster; only after I had set off, he came running after me, and I knew what that would be.'
'What does she do? Does she blarney him?'
'Yes, I suppose so. She means it, I believe; but she does natter him so that it would make me sick, if it didn't make me so wretched! You see he likes it, because he fancies her goodness itself; and so I suppose she is, only there is such a lot of clerical shop'-then, as Jock made a sound as if he did not like the slang in her mouth-'Ay, it sounds like Bobus; but if this goes on much longer, I shall turn to Bobus's way. He has all the sense on his side!'
'No, Babie,' said Jock very gravely. 'That's a much worse sort of folly!'
'And he will be gone before long,' said Barbara, much struck by a tone entirely unwonted from her brother. 'O Jock, I thought reverses would be rather nice and help one to be heroic, and perhaps they would, if they would only come faster, and Armine could be out of Miss Parsons's way; but I don't believe he will ever be better while he is here. I think!-I think!' and she began to sob, 'that Miss Parsons will really be the death of him if she is not hindered!'
'Can't he go on board the Petrel with Allen?'
'Mother did think of that,' said Babie, 'but Allen said he wasn't in spirits for the charge, and that cabin No. 2 wasn't comfortable enough.'
Jock was not the least surprised at this selfishness, but he said-
'We _will_ get him away somehow, Infanta, never fear! And when you have left this place, you'll be all right. You'll have the Friar, and he is a host in himself.'
'Yes,' said Babie, ruefully, 'but he is not a brother after all. Oh, Jock! mother says it is very wrong in me, but I can't help it.'
'What is wrong, little one?'
'To feel it so dreadful that you and Bobus are going! I know it is honour and glory, and promotion, and chivalry, and Victoria crosses, and all that Sydney and I used to care for; but, oh! we never thought of those that stayed at home.'
'You were a famous Spartan till the time came,' said Jock, in an odd husky voice.
'I wouldn't mind so much but for mother,' said poor Barbara, in an apologetic tone; 'nor if there were any stuff in Allen; nor if dear Armie were well and like himself; but, oh dear! I feel as if all the manhood and comfort of the family would be gone to the other end of the world.'
'What did you say about mother?'
'I beg your pardon, Jock, I didn't mean to worry you. I know it is a grand thing for you. But mother was so merry and happy when we thought we should all be snug with you in the old house, and she made such nice plans. But now she is so fagged and worn, and she can't sleep. She began to read as soon as it was light all those long summer mornings to keep from thinking; and she is teasing herself over her accounts. There were shoals of great horrid bills of things Allen ordered coming in at Midsummer, just as she thought she saw her way! Do you know, she thinks she may have to let our own house and go into lodgings.'
'Is that you, Barbara?' said a voice at the Parsonage wicket. 'How is our dear patient?'
'Rather better to-night, we think.'
'Tell him I hope to come and see him to-morrow. And say the vases are come. I thought your mother would wish us to have the large ones, so I put them in the Church. They are £3.'
Babie thought Jock's face was dazed when he came among the lights in Church, and that he moved and responded like an automaton, and she could hardly get a word out of him all the way home. There, they were sent
