it?'
'I've brought it. Nineteen copybooks and a dozen blank ones, though it was so hard to make Delrio pack them up.'
'Hurrah for the new ones! We did so want some for the 'Traveller's Joy,' the paper at Leukerbad was so bad. You should hear the verses the Doctor wrote on the mud baths. They are as stunning as 'Fly Leaves.' Mr. Editor, I say,' as Lord Fordham's tall figure strode towards them, 'she has brought out a dozen clean copybooks. Isn't that a joy for the 'Joy'?'
'Had you no other intentions for them?' said Fordham, detecting something of disappointment in Babie's face. 'You surely were not going to write exercises in them?'
'Oh, no!' said Babie, 'only-'
'She can't mention it on Sunday,' said Armine, a little wickedly. 'It's a wonderful long story about the Crusaders.'
'And,' explained Babie, 'our governess said we-that is I-thought of nothing else, and made the Lessons at Church and everything else apply to it, so she made me resolve to say nothing about it on Sunday.'
'And she has brought out nineteen copybooks full of it,' added Armine.
'Yes,' said Babie, 'but the little speckled ones are very small, and have half the leaves torn out, and we used to write larger when we began. I think,' she added, with the humility of an aspirant contributor towards the editor of a popular magazine, 'if Lord Fordham would be so kind as to look at it, Armie thought it might do what people call, I believe, supplying the serial element of fiction, and I should be happy to copy it out for each number, if I write well enough.'
The word 'happy,' was so genuine, and the speech so comical, that the Editor had much ado to keep his countenance as he gave considerable hopes that the serial element should be thus supplied in the MS. magazine.
Meantime, the two mothers were walking about and resting together, keeping their young people in some degree in view, and discussing at first the subject most on their minds, their sons' bodily health, and the past danger, for which Caroline found a deeply sympathetic listener, and one who took a hopeful view of Armine.
Mrs. Evelyn was indeed naturally disposed to augur well whenever the complaint was not hereditary, and she was besides in excellent spirits at the very visible progress of both her sons, the one in physical, the other in moral health, and she could not but attribute both to the companionship that she had been so anxious to prevent. She had never seen Duke look so well, nor seem so free from languor and indifference since he was a mere child, and all seemed due to his devotion to Armine; while as to Cecil, he seemed to have a new spring of improvement, which he ascribed altogether to his friend.
'It is strange to me to hear this of my poor Jock,' said Caroline, 'always my pickle and scapegrace, though he is a dear good-hearted boy. His uncle says it is that he wants a strong hand, but don't you think an uncle's strong hand is much worse than any mother's weakness?'
'Not than her weakness,' said Mrs. Evelyn. 'It is her love, I think, that you mean. There are some boys with whom strong hands are vain, but who will guide themselves for love, and that we mothers are surely the ones to infuse.'
'My boys are affectionate enough, dear fellows,' said Caroline proudly, forgetting her sore disappointment that neither Allen nor Robert had chosen to come to her help.
'I did not only mean love of oneself,' said Mrs. Evelyn, gently. 'I was thinking of the fine gold we heard of this morning. When our boys once have found that secret, the chief of our work is done.'
'Ah! and I never understood how to give them that,' said Caroline. 'We have been all astray ever since their father left us.'
'Do you know,' said Mrs. Evelyn, with a certain sweet shyness, 'I can't help thinking that your dear Lucas found that gold among the stones of the moraine, and will help my poor weak Cecil to keep a fast hold of it.'
Mrs. Evelyn's opinion was confirmed, when a few days later came the answer to Jock's letter to his tutor, pleasing and touching both friends so much that each showed it to his mother. Another important piece of intelligence came in a letter from John to his cousin, namely that the present Captain of the house, with two or three more 'fellows,' were leaving Eton at the Midsummer holidays, and that his tutor had been talking to him about becoming Captain.
Jock and Cecil greatly rejoiced, for the departing Captain had been a youth whose incapacity for government had been much better known to his subordinates than to his master, and the other two had been the special tempters and evil geniuses of the house, those who above all had set themselves to make obedience and religion seem contemptible, and vice daring and manly.
'I should have hated the notion of being Captain,' wrote John, 'if those impracticable fellows had stayed on, and if I did not feel sure of you and Evelyn. You are such a fellow for getting hold of the others, but with you two at my back, I really think the house may get a different tone into it.'
'And every one told us what an excellent character it had,' said Mrs. Evelyn, when the letter, through a chain of strict confidence, came round to her, the boys little knowing how much it did to decide their continuance together, and at Eton. Sir James had never been willing that Cecil should be taken away, and he had become as sensible as any of the rest to the Brownlow charm.
That was a very happy time in the pine-woods and the Alp. The whole of the nineteen copy books were actually read by Babie to Sydney and Armine; and Lord Fordham, over his sketches, submitted to hear a good deal. He told his mother that the story was the most diverting thing he had ever heard, with its queer mixture of childish simplicity and borrowed romance, of natural poetry and of infantine absurdity, of extraordinary knowledge and equally comical ignorance, of originality and imitation, so that his great difficulty had been not to laugh in the wrong place, when Babie had tears in her eyes at the heights of pathos and sublimity, and Sydney was shedding them for company. It was funny to come to places where Armine's slightly superior age and knowledge of the world began to tell, and when he corrected and criticised, or laughed, with appeals to his elder friend. Babie was so perfectly good-humoured about the sacrifice of her pet passages, and even of her dozen copybooks, that the editor of the 'Traveller's Joy' could not help encouraging the admission of 'Jotapata' into the magazine, in spite of the remonstrances of the rest of his public, who declared it was merely making the numbers a great deal heavier for postage, and all for nothing.
The magazine was well named, for it was a great resource. There were illustrations of all kinds, from Lord Fordham's careful watercolours, and Mrs. Brownlow's graceful figures or etchings, to the doctor's clever caricatures and grotesque outlines, and the contributions were equally miscellaneous. There were descriptions of scenery, fragmentary notes of history and science, records more or less veracious or absurd of personal adventures, and conversations, and advertisements, such as-
Stolen or strayed.-A parasol, white above, black below, minus a ring, with an ivory loop handle, and one broken whalebone. Whoever will bring the same to the Senora Donna Elvira de Menella, will he handsomely rewarded with a smile or a scowl, according to her mood.
Lost.-On the walk from the Alp, of inestimable value to the owner, and none to any one else, an Idea, one of the very few originated by the Honble. C. F. Evelyn.
Small wit went a good way, and personalities were by no means prohibited, since the editor could be trusted to exercise a safe discretion in the riddles, acrostics, and anagrams deposited in the bag at his door; and immense was the excitement when the numbers were produced, with a pleasing irregularity as to time, depending on when they became bulky enough to look respectable, and not too thick to be sewn up comfortably by the great Reeves, who did not mind turning his hand to anything when he saw his lordship so merry.
The only person who took no interest in the 'Traveller's Joy ' was Janet, who could not think how reasonable people could endure such nonsense. Her first affront had been taken at a most absurd description which Jock had illustrated by a fancy caricature of 'The Fox and the Crow,' 'Woman's Progress,' in which 'Mr. Hermann Dowsterswivel' was represented as haranguing by turns with her on the steamer, and, during her discourse, quietly secreting her bag. It was such wild fun that Lord Fordham never dreamt of its being an affront, nor perhaps would it have been, if Dr. Medlicott would have chopped logic, science, and philosophy with her in the way she thought her due from the only man who could be supposed to approach her in intellect. He however took to chaff. He would defend every popular error that she attacked, and with an acumen and ease that baffled her, even when she knew he was not in earnest, and made her feel like Thor, when the giant affected to take three blows with Miolner for three flaps of a rat's tail.
