The Pillars of the House, V1

on them all the judicial punishment of a terrible break-up of the home she loved, even while the tedium of the daily round oppressed her. Alternate plaintiveness and weary sharpness of course aggravated both Alda and Bernard, and they knew nothing of the repentant wretchedness that rather weakened than strengthened her.

Little Stella's unfailing docility and sweetness were her great solace. Even Alda was exceedingly fond of Stella, and would have spoilt her if the child had not been singularly firm in her intense love and loyalty to the heads of the family. Angel and Bear were too rough for her, and alarmed her sense of duty; but Lance was her hero; and the happiest moments of those holidays were spent in a certain loft above a warehouse in the court of the printing- office, only attainable by a long ladder. Here, secure that none but favoured ears could hear, Lance practised on his beloved violin, at every hour he could steal, emulating too often Mother Hubbard's dog 'fiddling to mice,' but his audience often including his three younger sisters. He had had scarcely any hints, but his was the nature that could pick music out of anything; and Angela, much more than Robin, was ecstatic in all that concerned the sixth sense, and watched and criticised with rapture, wanted to learn, and pouted at being told that it was not fit for a woman. Among those stacks of paper in the dusty loft, with the stamp and thud of the press close at hand, it was possible to forget, in creating sounds and longing to fulfil the dream of the spirit, that Alda was exacting and trying, Wilmet blind to the annoyances she caused, Cherry striving hard, and not always successfully, with the fretfulness of anxiety, and Felix-they durst not think in what state. That loft and that violin made their fairy- land, and one that rendered it most unusually hard for Lance to learn his holiday task.

'I'll tell you what, Lance,' said Robina at last, when he had vainly been trying to repeat it to her, with his eye on a sheet of music all the time, 'you can't do two things at once. If I were you, I would lock up that violin till the summer examination is over.'

He turned on her quite angrily. 'Very fine talking! Lock up all the pleasure I have in life! Thank you!'

'I'm quite sure you'll never get the exhibition if you have your head in this.'

'I shan't get the exhibition any way.'

'But if you do your utmost for it?'

'I shall do my utmost!'

'You can't if you have these tunes always running in your head, and are always wild to be picking them out.'

'Well, Robin, I sometimes think I should do more good with music than anything else.'

'Maybe,' said Robina, a sensible little woman; 'but you'll do no good by half and half. If you don't do well in the examination, Felix will be horribly vexed, and you'll always hate the thought of it.'

'I tell you I shall be as dull as ditch-water, and as stupid as Shapcote, if I don't have any pleasure.'

'I only don't want you to be stupider.'

Lance chucked up a pen-wiper and caught it.

'The fact is,' said Robina, 'all we've got to do is our best. If we don't, it is wrong in us, and it makes us more a weight on Felix; and I think it is our real duty to keep everything out of the way that hinders us, if it is ever so nice.'

'Is that Cock Robin, or Parson Rook with his little book?' said Lance, throwing the pen-wiper in her face.

But the week after, when Robina was at school again, she was called to receive a letter which had something hard in it.

'Did you leave a key behind you?' she was asked a little suspiciously, for there was nothing about it in the brief note.

'No, Miss Fennimore; but my brother has sent it to me to keep for him. It is the key of his violin-case, and he is not going to touch it till he is past his examination.'

From that time Miss Fennimore entertained a better opinion of Robina Underwood; but little recked Robina. She only felt secure that after this act of heroism Lance could not but gain the exhibition.

CHAPTER XVII. MIDSUMMER SUN

'For Phoebus' awful self encountered him

Amid the battle throng invisible,

In thickest darkness shrouded all his face;

He stood behind, and with extended palm

Dealt on Patroclus' neck and shoulder broad

A mighty buffet.'

Iliad, Book xvi. (EARL OF DERBY.)

Warmer weather came at last, and brought Mr. Froggatt back to his daily work, lifting a weight of responsibility from his young partner's shoulders.

The cough mended too, but did not entirely cease; and when June came in with an unusual access of summer heat, there were those who felt it as trying as the sharp wind had been. One evening, when the home party had been sitting in the garden, and the fall of the dew sent Cherry indoors, Felix, as usual, gave her his arm, and lifted her step by step up the stairs. She felt, all over her frame, that what used to be almost nothing to the boy was a severe exertion to the man.

'You should not do it!' she said, as they both stood resting at the top, he leaning back against the wall, and wiping his forehead, where the big blue V of the veins stood out prominently.

'Having so often carried the calf-I should be able to carry-the cow,' he said, the smile not disguising the panting of his voice.

'You are to be at the agricultural meeting at Dearport tomorrow. I wish you would just go and see Dr. Lee.'

'I think I shall.' And there they were interrupted.

Poor Geraldine! What worlds of apprehension were founded on that quiet assent, his first intimation that he believed himself unwell! She kept absolute silence. She could not have uttered her terrors for ten thousand worlds.

She was on her couch under the apple-tree, in the late afternoon, trying to force her thoughts out of miserable possibilities, when she saw Felix come out of the house, flushed, heated, dusty, tired; but somehow she gathered hope from his air, as he threw himself down on the grass by her side, saying, 'Mr. Froggatt sent me out to cool.'

'Stella, dear,' to the little one, who had her story-book at hand, 'run and ask Sibby to bring Felix out a cup of tea.' Then she tried to guess at his face, but durst not look at him fully. 'Are you very tired?'

'Rather! That place was a mere oven of roaring! Well, Cherry,' pulling off his neck-tie, and settling himself, with an elbow on her couch, and his back against the tree, 'there's nothing amiss with my lungs.'

She shuddered all over, and almost bounded; then put her hand tenderly on his shoulder.

'Your doctor is a clever man, I can see,' he continued. 'He seemed to guess about me directly. He sounded my chest, and says it is all right now, but that there had been a little damage; he thought the long cough I had after the measles had left traces that this winter has told upon.'

'Ah!' A great gasp.

'But there's no active disease-none at all; nor likely, if I can shake off this remnant of cough, and get into condition before the winter.'

Cherry sighed again at the white hand, and the network of blue veins on both it and the temple that was propped against it. 'You must indeed!' she wistfully said.

'I must,' said Felix, sighing too, as with little mind for the struggle. 'I've brought home a detestable bottle of cod-liver oil on the spot, and am to take to all the good living I can swallow. Won't that delight Mr. Froggatt s good old soul? Then the worst of it is that I am to go away to some sea place for the hottest of the weather.'

'Oh, I'm so glad!'

'He taxed me with not taking food enough; and when I allowed that I had no turn for eating, insisted on this sea plan: but he laughed me to scorn when I asked whether I might not get a room at Dearport, and run backwards and forwards. 'Ay,' he said, 'you have a good deal on your mind;' and I fell into the trap, and told him my partner had been ill, and we had a great deal to work up. And he went on to ask if I had not the charge of the family, and was not apt to get anxious about them; and he turned round on me, and ordered me to get a thorough holiday, and