'Ah!' said the Colonel, in a tone betokening that he was touched, and which encouraged John to continue,-
'Besides, I really do like and enter into scientific subjects better than any others; I believe it is my turn.'
'Perhaps-you do sometimes put me in mind of your uncle. But why have you only spoken of it now?'
'I don't think I really considered what I should be,' said John. 'There was quite enough to think of with work, and cricket, and all the rest, till this spring, when I have been off it all, and then when I talked it over with Dr. Medlicott, he settled my mind about various things that I wanted to know.'
'Did he persuade you?'
'No more than saying that I managed well for Jock when I was left alone with him, and that he thought I had the makings of a doctor in me. He loves his profession of course, and thinks it a grand one. Yes, papa, indeed I think it is. To be always learning the ways of God's working, for the sake of lessening all the pain and grief in the world-'
'Johnny! That's almost what my brother said to me thirty years ago, and what did it come to? Being at the beck and call night and day of every beggar in London, and dying at last in his prime, of disease caught in their service.'
'Yes,' said John, with a low, gruff sound in his voice, 'but is not that like being killed in battle?'
'The world doesn't think it so, my boy,' said the soldier. 'Well! what is it you propose to do?'
'I don't suppose it will make much difference yet,' said John, 'except that at Oxford I should go in more for physical science.'
'You don't want to give up the university?'
'Oh, no! Dr. Medlicott said a degree there is a great help, besides that, all the general study one can get is the more advantage, lifting one above the mere practitioner.'
'That is well,' said the Colonel. 'If you are to go to the university, there is no need to dwell further on the matter at present. You will have had time to see more of the world, and you will know whether this wish only comes from enthusiasm for a pleasant young man who has been kind to you, or if it be your real deliberate choice, and if so, your mother will have had time to reconcile herself to the notion. At any rate we will say no more about it for the present. Though I must say, Johnny,' he added, as he turned his horse's head between the ribbon borders of the approach, 'you have thought and spoken like a sensible lad, and so like my dear brother, that I could not deny you.'
If Johnny could hardly believe in the unwonted commendation which made his heart throb, and sent a flood of colour into his cheeks. Colonel Brownlow was equally amazed at the boy's attainment of a manly and earnest thought and purpose, so utterly unlike anything he had hitherto seen in the stolid Rob, or the easy-going Allen, or even in Bobus, who-whatever there might be in him-never thought it worth while to show it to his uncle.
However, discussion was cut short by a little flying figure which came rushing across the garden, and Babie with streaming hair clung to her cousin, gasping-
'Oh! Johnny, Johnny, tell me about Armie and Jock.'
'They are ever so much better, Babie,' said Johnny, lifting the slim little thing up in his arms, as he had lifted his own five-year-old brother; 'I've got a thick parcel of acrostics for you, Armie makes them in bed, and Lord Fordham writes them out.'
'Will you come to the rosary, Uncle Robert?' said Babie, recovering her manners, as Johnny set her down. 'It is the coolest place, and they are sitting there.'
'Why, Babie, what a sprite you look,' said Johnny. 'You look as if you were just off the sick-list too!'
'I'm all right,' said Babie, shaking her hair at him, and bounding on before with the tidings of their coming, while her uncle observed in a low voice-
'Poor little thing! I believe she has been a good deal knocked up between the heat and the anxiety; there was no making her eat or sleep. Ah! Miss Elfie, are you acting queen of roses?' as Babie returned together with Elvira, who with a rich dark red rose over one ear, and a large bouquet at her bosom, justified the epithet at which she bridled, and half curtsied in her graceful stately archness, as she gave her hand in greeting, and exclaimed-
'Ah, Johnny! are you come? When is Mother Carey going to send for us?'
'When they leave Leukerbad I fancy,' said John. 'That's a tiresome place for anyone who does not need to lead the life of a hippo- potamus.'
'It can't be more tiresome than this is,' said Elvira, with a yawn. 'Lessons all day, and nobody to come near us.'
'Isn't this a dreadful place?' said John, merrily, as he looked into the rosary, a charming bowery circle of fragrance, inclosed by arches of trellis-work on which roses were trained, their wreaths now bearing a profusion of blossoms of every exquisite tint, from deep crimson or golden-yellow, to purest white, while their more splendid standard sisters bloomed out in fragrant and gorgeous magnificence under their protection.
At the shady end there was a little grass plat round a tiny fountain, whose feather of spray rose and plashed coolness. Near it were seats where Miss Ogilvie and Janet were discovered with books and work. They came forward with greetings and inquiries, which Johnny answered in detail.
'Yes, they are both better. Armine sat by the window for an hour the day before I came away.'
'Will they be able to come back to Eton after the holidays?' asked his father.
'Certainly not Armine, but Jock seems to be getting all right. If he was to catch rheumatism he did it at the right place, for that's what Leukerbad is good for. Oh, Babie, you never saw such a lark! Fancy a great room, and where the floor ought to be, nothing but muddy water or liquid mud, with steps going down, and a lot of heads looking out of it, some with curly heads, some in smoking-caps, some in fine caps of lace and ribbons.'
'Oh! Johnny; like women!'
'Like women! They are women.'
'Not both together.'
'Yes, I tell you, the whole boiling of them, male and female. There's a fat German Countess, who always calls Jock her liebes Kind, and comes floundering after him, to his very great disgust. The only things they have to show they are human still, and not frogs, are little boards floating before them with their pocket-handkerchiefs and coffee-cups and newspapers.'
'Oh! like the little blacks in the dear bright bays at San Ildefonso,' cried Elvira.
'You don't mean that they have no clothes on?' said Babie, with shocked downrightness of speech that made everybody laugh; and Johnny satisfied her on that score, adding that Dr. Medlicott had made a parody of Tennyson's 'Merman,' for Jock's benefit, on giving him up to a Leukerbad doctor, who was to conduct his month's Kur. It was to go into the 'Traveller's Joy,' a manuscript magazine, the 'first number of which was being concocted and illustrated amongst the Leukerbad party, for the benefit of Babie and Sydney Evelyn. As a foretaste, Johnny produced from the bag he still carried strapped on his shoulder, a packet of acrostics addressed to Miss Barbara Brownlow, and a smaller envelope for Janet.
'Is it the key?' asked Colonel Brownlow.
'Yes,' said Janet, 'the key of her davenport, and directions in which drawer to find the letters you want. Do you like to have them at once, Uncle Robert?'
'Thank you-yes, for then I can go round and settle with that fellow Martin, which I can't do without knowing exactly what passed between him and your mother.'
Janet went off, observing-'I wonder whether that is a possibility;' while Miss Ogilvie put in an anxious inquiry for Mrs. Brownlow's health and spirits, and a good many more details were elicited than Johnny had given at home. She had never broken down, and now that she was hopeful, was, in spite of her fatigue, as bright and merry as ever, and was contributing comic pictures to the 'Traveller's Joy,' while Lord Fordham did the sketches. Those kind people were as careful of her as any could be.
'And what are her further plans?' asked Miss Ogilvie. 'Has she been able to form any?'
'Hardly,' said Johnny. 'They must stay at Leukerbad for a month for Jock to have the course of waters rightly, and indeed Armine could hardly be moved sooner. I think Dr. Medlicott wants them to keep in Switzerland till the heat of the weather is over, and then winter in the south.'
'And when may I go to Armine?'
'When shall we get away from here?' asked Babie and Elfie in a breath.
'I don't quite know,' said John. 'There is not much room to spare in the hotel where they are at Leukerbad, and it is a dreadfully slow place. Evelyn is growling like a dozen polar bears at it.'
