For Janet was arrayed in a close-fitting pale blue dress, cut in semblance of an ancient kirtle, and with a huge chatelaine, from which massive chains dangled, not to say clattered-not merely the ordinary appendages of a young lady, but a pair of compasses, a safety inkstand, and a microscope. Her dark hair was strained back from a face not calculated to bear exposure, and was wound round a silver arrow.
Elfie shook with laughter, murmuring-
'Oh dear! what a fright!' in accents which Miss Ogilvie tried to hush; while Babie observed, as a sort of excuse, 'Janet always is a figure of fun when she is picturesque.'
'My dear, I hope you are not going to show yourself to any one in that dress,' added her mother.
'It is perfectly correct,' said Janet, 'studied from an old Italian costume.'
'The Marchioness of Carabbas, in my old fairy-tale book. Oh, yes, I see!' and Babie went off again in an ecstatic fit of laughter.
'I hope you've got boots and a tail ready for George,' added Bobus. 'Being a tiger already, he may serve as cat.'
Therewith the post came in, and broke up the discourse; for Babie had a letter from Eton, from Armine who was shut up with a sore throat.'
Her mother was less happy. She had asked a holiday for the next day for her two Eton boys and their cousin John, and the reply had been that though for two of the party there could be no objection, her elder boy was under punishment for one of the wild escapades to which he was too apt to pervert his excellent abilities.
'Are not they coming, mother?' asked Babie. 'Armie does not say.'
'Unfortunately Jock has got kept in again.'
'Poor Jock!' said Bobus; 'sixpence a day, and no expectations, would have been better pasture for his brains.'
'Yes,' said his mother with a sigh, 'I doubt if we are any of us much the better or the wiser for Belforest.'
'The wiser, I'm sure, because we've got Miss Ogilvie,' cried Babie.
'Do I hear babes uttering the words of wisdom?' asked Allen, coming into the room, and pretending to pull her hair, as the school-room party rose from the breakfast-table, and he met them with outstretched hands.
'Ay, to despise Lag-last,' said Elvira, darting out of his reach, and tossing her dark locks at him as she hid behind a fern plant in the window; and there was a laughing scuffle, ended by Miss Ogilvie, who swept the children away to the school-room, while Allen came to the table, where his mother had poured out his coffee, and still waited to preside over his breakfast, though she had long finished her own.
Allen Brownlow, at twenty, was emphatically the Eton and Christchurch production, just well made and good- looking enough to do full justice to his training and general getting up, without too much individual personality of his own. He looked only so much of a man as was needful for looking a perfect gentleman, and his dress and equipments were in the most perfect quietly exquisite style, as costly as possible, yet with no display, and nothing to catch the eye.
'Well, Bobus,' he said, 'you made out your expedition. How did the place look?'
'Wasting its sweetness,' said his mother; 'it is tantalising to think of it.'
'It could hardly be said to be wasted,' said Bobus; 'the natives were disporting themselves all over it.'
'Where?' asked Allen, with displeased animation.
'O, Essie and Ellie were promenading a select party about the gardens. I could almost hear Mackintyre gnashing his teeth at their inroads on the forced strawberries, and the park and Elmwood Spinney were dotted so thick with people, that we had to look sharp not to fall in with any one.'
'Elmwood Spinney!' exclaimed Allen; 'you don't mean that they were running riot over the preserves?'
'I don't think there were more than half-a-dozen there. Bauerson was quite edified. He said, 'So! they had on your English Sunday quite falsely me informed.' There were a couple of lovers spooning and some children gathering flowers, and it had just the Arcadian look dear to the German eye.'
'Children,' cried Allen, as if they were vipers. 'That's just what I told you, mother. If you will persist in throwing open the park, we shall not have a pheasant on the place.'
'My dear boy, I have seen them running about like chickens in a farmyard.'
'Yes, but what's the use, if all the little beggars in Kenminster are to be let in to make them wild! And when you knew I particularly wished to have something worth asking Prince Siegfried down to.'
'Never mind, Allen,' put in Janet; 'you can ask him to shoot into the poultry yard. The poor things are just as thick there, and rather tamer, so the sport will be the more noble.'
'You know nothing about it, Janet,' said Allen, in displeasure.
'But Allen,' said his mother, apologetically, though she felt with Janet, 'the woods are locked up.'
'Locked! As if that was any use when you let a lot of boys come marauding all over the place!'
'Really, Allen,' said his mother, 'when I remember what we used to say about old Mr. Barnes, I cannot find it in my heart to play the same game!'
'It is quite a different thing.'
'How?'
'He did it out of mere surliness.'
'I don't suppose it makes much difference to the excluded whether it is done out of mere surliness, or for the sake of the preserves.'
'Mother!' Allen spoke as if the absurdity of the argument were quite too much for him; but his brother and sister both laughed, which nettled him into adding-
'Well! All I have to say is, that if Belforest is to be nothing but a people's park for all the ragamuffins in Kenminster, there will soon not be a head of game in the place, and I shall be obliged to shoot elsewhere!'
Poor Caroline! If there was a thing she specially hated, it was a battue, both for the thing itself, and all the previous preparation of preserving, and of prosecuting poachers; and yet sons have their mothers so much in their power by that threat of staying away from home, that she could not help faltering, 'Oh, Allen, I'll do my best, and tell the keepers to be very careful, and lock the gates of all the preserves.'
Allen saw she was vexed, and spoke more kindly, 'There, never mind, mother. It is more than can be expected that ladies should see things in a reasonable light.'
'What is the reasonable light?' asked Bobus.
Allen did not choose to hear, regarding Bobus not indeed as a woman, but as something as little capable of appreciating his reason. It was Janet who took up the word. 'The reasonable light is that the enjoyment of the many should be sacrificed to the vanity of the few, viz., that all Kenminster should be confined to dusty roads all the year round in order that Allen may bring down the youngest son of the youngest son of a German prince for one day to fire amongst some hundreds of tame pheasants who come up expecting to be fed.'
'Oh, yes,' said Allen, 'we all know that you are a regular out-and- out democrat, Janet.'
'I confess, without being a democrat,' said his mother, 'that I do wonder that you gentlemen, who wish the game laws to continue, should so work them as to be more aggravating than ever.'
'It is a simple question of the rights of property,' said Allen. 'If I do a thing, I like it to be well done, and not half-and-half.'
Caroline rose from the table, dreading, like many a mother, a regular skirmish about game-preserving, between those who cared to shoot, and those who did not. Like other ladies, she could never understand exaggerated preserving, nor why men who loved sport should care to have game multiplied and tamed so as apparently to spoil all the zest of the chase; but she had let Allen and his uncle do what ever they told her was right by the preserves, except shutting up the park and all the footpaths. Colonel Brownlow, whose sporting instincts were those of a former generation, was quite satisfied; Allen never would be so; and it was one of the few bones of contention in the family.
For Allen was walking through Oxford in a quiet, amiable way, not troubling himself more about study than to secure himself from an ignominious pluck, and doing whatever was supposed to be 'good form.'
His brother accused him of carrying his idolatry of 'good form' to a snobbish extent, but Allen could carry it out so naturally that no one could have suspected that he had not been to the manner born. If he did appreciate the society of people with handles to their names, he comported himself among them as their easy equal; and he was so lavish as to be a very popular man. He had no vicious tastes or tendencies, and was too gentlemanly and quiet ever to come into collision with the authorities. At home, except when his notions of 'good form' were at variance with strong opinions of his mother's, nothing could be more chivalrously deferential than his whole demeanour to
