'Why isn't he gone back with you to Eton?'
'I believe it was settled that he was not to go back this half, for fear of his lungs, and you see he is a swell who takes it easily. He would have been glad enough to return with me though, and would scarcely have endured staying, but that he is so fond of Jock.'
'What is there to be done there?'
'Nothing, except to wade in tepid mud. Fordham has routed out a German to read Faust with, and that puts Evelyn into a sweet temper. They go on expeditions, and do sketching and botany, which amuses Armine; but they get up some fun over the queer people, and _do_ them for the mag., but it is all deadly lively, not that I saw much of it, for we only got down from Schwarenbach on Monday, and they kept me in bed all the two next days; but Jock and Evelyn hate it awfully. Indeed Jock is so down in the mouth altogether I don't know what to make of him, and just when the German doctors say the treatment makes people particularly brisk and lively.'
'Perhaps what makes a German lively makes an Englishman grave,' sagely observed Babie.
'Jock grave must be a strange sight,' said the Colonel; 'I am afraid he can't be recovering properly.'
'The doctor thinks he is,' said John; 'but then he doesn't know the nature of the Skipjack. But,' he added, in a low voice, 'that night was enough to make any one grave, and it was much the worst to Jock, because he kept his senses almost all the time, and was a good deal hurt besides to begin with. His sprain is still so bad that he has to be carried upstairs and to go to the baths in a chair.'
'And do you think,' said the Colonel, 'that this young lord is going to stay on all this time in this dull place for the sake of an utter stranger?'.
'Jock and Evelyn were always great friends at Eton,' said John. 'Then my uncle did something, I don't know what, that Medlicott is grateful for, and they have promised to see Armine through this illness. The place agrees with Fordham; they say he has never been so well or active since he came out.'
'What is he like?' inquired Babie.
'Like, Babie? Like anything long and limp you can think of. He sits all in a coil and twist, and you don't think there's much of him; but when he gets up and pulls himself upright, you go looking and looking till you don't know where's the top of him, till you see a thin white face in washed-out hair. He is a good fellow, awfully kind, and I suppose he can't help being such a tremendous-' John hesitated, in deference to his father, for a word that was not slang, and finally chose 'don.'
'Oh,' sighed Babie, 'Armie said in his note he was jolly beyond description.'
'Well, so he is,' said John; 'he plays chess with Armie, and brings him flowers and books, and waits on him as you used to do on a sick doll. And that's just what he is; he ought to have been a woman, and he would have been much happier too, poor fellow. I'd rather be dead at once than drag about such a life of coddling as he does.'
'Poor lad!' said his father. 'Did Janet understand that I was waiting for those letters, I wonder?'
'You had better go and see, Babie,' said Miss Ogilvie. 'Perhaps she cannot find them.'
Babie set off, and John proceeded to explain that Mrs. Evelyn was still detained in London by old Lady Fordham, who continued to be kept between life and death by her doctors. Meantime, the sons could dispose of themselves as they pleased, while under the care of Dr. Medlicott, and were not wanted at home, so that there was little doubt but that they would remain with Armine as long as he needed their physician's care.
All the while Elfie was flitting about, pelting Johnny with handfuls snatched from over-blown roses, and though he returned the assault at every pause, his grey travelling suit was bestrewn with crimson, pink, cream, and white petals.
At last the debris of a huge Eugenie Grandet hit him full on the bridge of his nose, and caused him to exclaim-
'Nay, Elfie, you little wretch; that was quite a good rose--not fair game,' and leaping up to give her chase in and out among the beds, they nearly ran against Janet returning with the letters, and saying 'she was sorry to have been so long, but mother's hoards were never easy places of research.'
Barbara came more slowly back, and looked somewhat as if she had had a sharper rebuke than she understood or relished.
Poor child! she had suffered much in this her first real trouble, and a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to come peeping and worrying.
Janet had given a most violent start when she opened the door of her mother's bedroom where the davenport stood; and Janet much resented being startled; no doubt that was the reason she was so cross, thought Barbara, but still it was very disagreeable.
That room was the child's also. She had been her mother's bed-fellow ever since her father's death, and she felt her present solitude. The nights were sultry, and her sleep had been broken of late.
That night she was in a slumber as cool as a widely-opened window would make it, but not so sound that she was not haunted all the time by dread for Armine.
Suddenly she was awakened to full consciousness by seeing a light in the room. No, it was not the maid putting away her dresses. It was Janet, bending over her mother's davenport.
Babie started up.
'Janet! Is anything the matter?'
'Nothing! Nonsense! go to sleep, child.'
'What are you about?'
'Never mind. Only mother keeps her things in such a mess; I was setting them to rights after disturbing them to find the book.'
There was something in the tone like an apology.
Babie did not like it, but she well knew that she should be contemptuously put down if she attempted an inquiry, far less a remonstrance, with Janet. Only, with a puzzled sort of watch-dog sense, she sat up in bed and stared.
'Why don't you lie down?' said Janet.
Babie did lie down, but on her back, her head high up on the pillow, and her eyes well open still.
Perhaps Janet did not like it, for she gave an impatient shuffle to the papers, shut the drawer with a jerk, locked it, took up her candle, and went away without vouchsafing a 'good-night.'
Babie lay wondering. She knew that the davenport contained all that was most sacred and precious to her mother, as relics of her old life, and that only dire necessity would have made her let anyone touch it. What could Janet mean? To speak would be of no use. One- and-twenty was not likely to listen to thirteen, though Babie, in her dreamy wakefulness, found herself composing conversations in which she made eloquent appeals to Janet, which she was never likely to utter.
At last the morning twitterings began outside, doves cooed, peacocks miawed, light dawned, and Babie's perceptions cleared themselves. In the wainscoted room was a large closet, used for hanging up cloaks and dresses, and fortunately empty. No sooner did the light begin to reflect itself in its polished oak-panelled door, than an idea struck Babie, and bounding from her bed, she opened the door, wheeled in the davenport, shut it in, turned the big rusty key with both hands and a desperate effort, then repairing to her own little inner room, disturbed the honourable retirement of the last and best-beloved of her dolls in a pink-lined cradle in a disused doll's house, and laying the key beneath the mattress, felt heroically ready for the thumbscrew rather than yield it up. She knew Armine would say she was right, and be indignant that Janet should meddle with mother's private stores. So she turned over on the pillow, cooled by the morning breeze, and fell into a sound sleep, whence she was only roused by the third 'Miss Barbara,' from her maid.
She heard no more of the matter, and but for the absence of the davenport could really have thought it all a dream.
She was driving her two little fairy ponies to Kenminster with Elvira, to get the afternoon post, when a quiet, light step came into the bedroom, and Janet stood within it, looking for the davenport, as if she did not quite believe her senses. However, remembering Babie's eyes, she had her suspicions. She looked into the little girl's room and saw nothing, then tried the closet door, and finding it locked, came to a tolerably correct guess as to what had become of it, and felt hotly angry at 'that conceited child's meddling folly.'
For the awkward thing was that the clasped memorandum-book, containing 'Magnum Bonum,' was in her hand, locked out of, instead of into, its drawer.
When searching for the account-book for her uncle, it had, as it were, offered itself to her; and though so far
