the whole female household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable, between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure. Then Ellen and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic mass to order.'
It was not long before Janet appeared, and Jessie with her, the latter having been set down to give a message. The two girls were dressed in the same light black-and-white checked silk of early youth, one with pink ribbons and the other with blue; but the contrast was the more apparent, for one was fresh and crisp, while the other was flattened and tumbled; one said everything had been delightful, the other that it had all been very stupid, and the expression made even more difference than the complexion, in one so fair, fresh, and rosy, in the other so sallow and muddled. Jessie looked so sweet and bright, that when she had gone Miss Ogilvie could not help exclaiming, 'How pretty she is!'
'Yes, and so good-tempered and pleasant. There is something always restful to me in having her in the room,' said Caroline.
'Restful?' said Janet, with one of her unamiable sneers. 'Yes, she and H. S. H. sent me off to sleep with their gossip on the way home! O mother, there's another item for the Belforest record. Mr. Barnes has sent off all his servants again, even the confidential man is shipped off to America.'
'You seem to have slept with one ear open,' said her mother. 'And oh!' as Janet took off her gloves, 'I hope you did not show those hands!'
'I could not eat cake without doing so, and Mr. Glover supposed I had been photographing.'
'And what had you been doing?' inquired Mary, at sight of the brown stains.
'Trying chemical experiments with Bobus,' said her mother.
'Yes!' cried Janet, 'and I've found out why we did not succeed. I thought it out during the dancing.'
'Instead of cultivating the 'light fantastic toe,' as the Courier calls it.'
'I danced twice, and a great plague it was. Only with Mr. Glover and with a stupid little middy. I was thinking all the time how senseless it was.'
'How agreeable you must have been!'
'One can't be agreeable to people like that. Oh, Bobus!' as he came into the room with Mr. Ogilvie, 'I've found out-'
'I thought Jessie was here,' he interrupted.
'She's gone home. I know what was wrong yesterday. We ought to have isolated the hypo-'
'Isolated the grandmother,' said Bobus. 'That has nothing to do with it.'
'I'm sure of it. I'll show you how it acts.'
'I'll show you just the contrary.'
'Not to-night,' cried their mother, as Bobus began to relight the lamp. 'You two explosives are quite perilous enough by day without lamps and candles.'
'You endure a great deal,' said Mr. Ogilvie.
'I'm not afraid of either of these two doing anything dangerous singly, for they are both careful, but when they are of different minds, I never know what the collision may produce.'
'Yes,' said Bobus, 'I'd much sooner have Jessie to help me, for she does what she is bid, and never thinks.'
'That's all you think women good for,' said Janet.
'Quite true,' said Bobus, coolly.
And Mr. Ogilvie was acknowledged by his sister to have done a good deed that night, since the Folly might be far more secure when Janet tried her experiments alone.
CHAPTER XIV. PUMPING AWAY.
The rude will scuffle through with ease enough, Great schools best suit the sturdy and the rough. Soon see your wish fulfilled in either child, The pert made perter, and the tame made wild. Cowper.
Robert Otway Brownlow came out fourth on the roll of newly-elected scholars of S. Mary, Winton, and his master was, as his sister declared, unwholesomely proud of it, even while he gave all credit to the Folly, and none to himself.
Still Mary had her way and took him to Brittany, and though her present pupils were to leave the schoolroom at Christmas, she would bind herself to no fresh engagement, thinking that she had better be free to make a home for him, whether at Kenminster or elsewhere.
When the half-year began again Bobus was a good deal missed, Jock was in a severe idle fit, and Armine did not come up to the expectations formed of him, and was found, when 'up to Mr. Perkins,' to be as bewildered and unready as other people.
All the work in the school seemed flat and poor, except perhaps Johnny's, which steadily improved. Robert, whose father wished him to be pushed on so as to be fit for examination for Sandhurst, opposed, to all pressure, the passive resistance of stolidity. He was nearly sixteen, but seemed incapable of understanding that compulsory studies were for his good and not a cruel exercise of tyranny. He disdainfully rejected an offer from his aunt to help him in the French and arithmetic which had become imminent, while of the first he knew much less than Babie, and of the latter only as much as would serve to prevent his being daily 'kept in.'
One chilly autumn afternoon, Armine was seen, even by the unobservant under-master, to be shivering violently, and his teeth chattering so that he could not speak plainly.
'You ought to be at home,' said Mr. Perkins. 'Here, you, Brownlow maximus, just see him home, and tell his mother that he should be seen to.'
'I can go alone,' Armine tried to say; but Mr. Perkins thought the head-master could not say he neglected one who was felt to be a favoured scholar if he sent his cousin with him.
So presently Armine was pushed in at the back door, with these words from Rob to the cook-'Look here, he's been and got cold, or something.'
Rob then disappeared, and Armine struggled in to the kitchen fire, white, sobbing and panting, and, as the compassionate maids discovered, drenched from head to foot, his hair soaked, his boots squishing with water. His mother and sisters were out, and as cook administered the hottest draught she could compound, and Emma tugged at his jacket, they indignantly demanded what he had been doing to himself.
'Nothing,' he said. 'I'll go and take my things off; only please don't tell mother.'
'Yes,' said old nurse, who had tottered in, but who was past fully comprehending emergencies; 'go and get into bed, my dear, and Emma shall come and warm it for him.'
'No,' stoutly said the little boy; 'there's nothing the matter, and mother must not know.'
'Take my word for it,' said cook, 'that child have a been treated shameful by those great nasty brutes of big boys.'
And when Armine, too cold to sit anywhere but by the only fire in the house, returned with a book and begged humbly for leave to warm himself, he was installed on nurse's footstool, in front of a huge fire, and hot tea and 'lardy-cake' tendered for his refreshment, while the maids by turns pitied and questioned him.
'Have you had a haccident, sir,' asked cook.
'No,' he wearily said.
'Have any one been doing anything to you, then?' And as he did not answer she continued: 'You need not think to blind me, sir; I sees it as if it was in print. Them big boys have been a-misusing of you.'
'Now, cook, you ain't to say a word to my mother,' cried Armine, vehemently. 'Promise me.'
'If you'll tell me all about it, sir,' said cook, coaxingly.
'No,' he answered, 'I promised!' And he buried his head in nurse's lap.
'I calls that a shame,' put in Emma; 'but you could tell _we_, Master Armine. It ain't like telling your ma nor your master.'
'I said no one,' said Armine.
The maids left off tormenting him after a time, letting him fall asleep with his head on the lap of old nurse, who went on dreamily stroking his damp hair, not half understanding the matter, or she would have sent him to bed.
Being bound by no promise of secrecy, Emma met her mistress with a statement of the surmises of the
