Front matter (continued 2)

One morning in early October, Montagu was sitting, as usual, at his little table copying the Greek alphabet, while Mr. Wycherly sat watching him with pleased, dreamy eyes. As the little boy completed his task he raised his head with a sigh of satisfaction and happened to look down into the garden.

"Do you think?" he suddenly asked Mr. Wycherly, "I might go out and help Aunt Esperance dig the potatoes? The ground seems so heavy this morning."

Mr. Wycherly rose hastily, crossed over to Montagu's window and looked out.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, and fled from the room.

Much astonished at this outburst from his usually serene tutor, Montagu tore downstairs after him.

What Mr. Wycherly had seen to cause him such consternation was what he might have seen any time during the last fifteen years—namely, the tiny, stooping figure of Miss Esperance digging the potatoes for the day's dinner. But if it ever happened that he did look out he had never chanced to look down into the homely garden below, or if he had his eyes were holden, and he was wrapped in his dreams. So that he beheld only the things of the spirit, nor did he know how often the palms of those little hands, so ready to help others, were hard and blistered by their labours.

Since the days when he ran shouting along the towing path at Oxford Mr. Wycherly had never run as he ran that morning to the potato patch at Remote. Montagu was hard put to it to catch him, but just managed it, and they arrived together before the astonished eyes of Miss Esperance, who saw them coming in such hot haste, and rested on her spade in fear and trembling as to what could have happened.

When Mr. Wycherly did reach her he could not speak, so breathless was he: but he looked beseechingly at her and gently took the spade out of her hands.

"Why?" he gasped, "Why?" His face worked strangely and he could say nothing more. Montagu stood watching him with solemn, puzzled eyes.

But Miss Esperance understood. "You have come to help me," she said gently, "that is very kind of you. Montagu! away and get your wee spade and dig too."

The little boy needed no second bidding, and flew to the tool-house. Mr. Wycherly hadn't the faintest notion how to dig potatoes. He had never held a spade in his hands before, and held this much as a nervous person unaccustomed to firearms might hold a loaded gun. He looked helplessly at Miss Esperance, and still the lines were deep about his mouth and his eyes full of that new, dumb pain.

"Watch Montagu!" she whispered reassuringly, "he's a famous digger."

Between them they dug quite a lot of potatoes, and Mr. Wycherly, himself, carried the heavy basket to Elsa at the back door. She took it from him without comment of any kind, but when he had gone round through the garden to get into the house by the front, she looked into the basket, exclaiming, "Now what put sic' a whigmalerie as this in his head?" And it seemed as if the potatoes must have thrown some light upon the question, for in another minute she said softly, "Yon's no a bad buddy."

When Montagu went back to his lessons he found his tutor, with earthy hands clasped behind him, restlessly pacing up and down his room.

"I think you've done enough this morning," said Mr. Wycherly. "You'd better go out and play while it is so fine and nice."

"It's not twelve o'clock yet," Montagu objected, "and I generally do lessons till twelve."

"We shall have plenty of wet days by-and-by," Mr. Wycherly answered. "Go out now, and make the most of it while it is fine."

"But Robina and Edmund's gone, and Aunt Esperance is busy—won't you come?"

"Yes, I'll come." But yet Mr. Wycherly made no move to get ready.

"I've washed my hands," Montagu remarked virtuously.

Mr. Wycherly started, unclasped his hands and held them out in front of him. "I fear," he said sadly, "that nothing will wash mine." A remark which puzzled Montagu extremely, for in a few minutes Mr. Wycherly returned from his bedroom with perfectly clean hands.

It was a very silent walk at first, and what conversation there was Montagu made. At last he grew rather tired of this one-sided intercourse and gave his companion's hand a tug as he demanded: "Are you asleep, that you don't never answer?"

Mr. Wycherly started. "No, my dear son," he said very gently; "I think that I am just beginning to be awake."

"Will you talk to me then, like you generally do, and tell me things? Shall we go on about Jason? I do love stories where people do things."

Mr. Wycherly stood still in the middle of the road, and looked down into the little eager face uplifted to his. "You are right, Montagu," he said very gravely; "it is of little use to think things if you don't do them." And then it seemed as though Mr. Wycherly gave himself a mental shake, for he devoted his whole attention to Montagu for the rest of their walk.

Mr. Wycherly's early dinner was served in his own room, but he always supped downstairs with Miss Esperance at seven o'clock. He was the most unpunctual of mortals, and when he first came, infuriated Elsa by sometimes forgetting to eat any lunch at all. But when he discovered that these lapses really distressed Miss Esperance, he schooled himself to keep as nearly as possible to the appointed hours. He was never late for supper, for that would have been discourteous to Miss Esperance, and he was incapable of discourtesy; but he did allow himself a certain amount of laxity with regard to lunch. As for breakfast—ever since the coming of the children he had been a model of punctuality, for they woke him up so uncommonly early.

When he entered his room after the walk with Montagu, he found his lunch all ready set on the round table in the middle of the room. This table was sacred to meals, and he was not permitted to pile it with books and papers. Hence, he was wont to regard its oaken emptiness between whiles with a wistful envy. It was so much good space wasted. His lunch was always very nicely laid, and to-day there was cold beef, thin dainty slices adorned with parsley by Elsa's careful hand, and beside the beef stood a covered vegetable dish. Mr. Wycherly sat down at the table, poured out a glass of ale from the little Toby jug set at his right hand and mechanically lifted the cover of the dish. Potatoes were in that dish, and at the sight of them he rose hastily from the table. He went over to his big, knee-hole desk, and sitting down in front of it said aloud: "And all these years she has been digging potatoes for me!"

Like a tired schoolboy he leaned forward, his arms upon his desk, laid his head down on them, and the room was very still.

When Elsa went in to take away the dishes, he had gone out: but his lunch was untouched. She shook her head ominously, and went and turned down his bed, though it was only early afternoon.

Mr. Wycherly walked and walked till he was quite worn out. He got back to the house about four o'clock, crawled up to his room, and sank quite exhausted into his big chair by the window. All afternoon Elsa had been watching for him, and three minutes after his return she followed him upstairs bearing a little tray on which were set a cup of tea and a plate of most tempting-looking scones. She didn't even knock at his door, but went straight in, pushed the round table up to his elbow and laid the little tray upon it. She took up her stand at the window with her back to Mr. Wycherly, remarking fiercely: "From this place I'll not stir till you've taken that tea."

She did not even add the usual tardy "sir," and Mr. Wycherly was so startled that he never noticed the omission. He drank the tea, and ate two scones, and all the time Elsa stood with her back to him looking out of the window.

Presently he touched her on the arm. "I am very much obliged to you, Elsa," he said. "I think I must have forgotten to eat as much lunch as usual, I was so extremely tired, but I feel much refreshed now."

Elsa grunted something quite inaudible, took the tray off the table, and, still with averted head, stumped out of the room.

But the fates had not done with Mr. Wycherly that day. As he and Miss Esperance sat down to supper, Montagu, who for some reason was rather later than usual in going to bed, came in to say good night to them. He first kissed his aunt, who sat at one end of the table, then went to kiss Mr. Wycherly who sat at the other. Having said good night, of course he lingered, leant confidingly against his tutor, and in the universal fashion of children who would fain put off the evil hour of bed, remarked detachedly: "You've got chops. Aunt Esperance has only got an egg. Don't you like chops, Aunt Esperance? I do, much better than eggs."

Mr. Wycherly dropped back in his chair, looking painfully distressed. For a moment there was a dreadful pause, but the beautiful breeding of Miss Esperance stood her in good stead even then.

"Do you know," she exclaimed, as though a sudden thought had struck her, "I feel unusually hungry to-night. I think I will defy my doctor for once, and take a chop after all, Mr. Wycherly."

And Miss Esperance handed up her little plate for the chop which Mr. Wycherly joyfully placed upon it. But now came another difficulty. Miss Esperance, who had eaten a boiled egg at this hour nearly every night for some twenty years, had no fork.

"Montagu, my son," she said cheerfully, "run and ask Elsa for a fork for me."

No man ever existed who cared less about eating than Mr. Wycherly. Whatsoever was set before him, that he ate meekly and without comment—if he remembered. He always offered to help Miss Esperance from whatever dish was set before him at supper, and she as invariably refused it. It would have seemed to him an unwarrantable piece of interference even so indirectly to criticise her housekeeping as to suggest what she should eat. But to-day there had occurred something which had entirely shaken him out of his usual patient acquiescence in existing conditions: so that, when Montagu pointed out that his fare was so much better than that of Miss Esperance, he was seized by a new anguish of self-reproach. Had he, all these years, been living luxuriously?—that is how poor Mr. Wycherly put it to himself—while she, who with her frail little hands had pulled him forcibly back from the abyss into which he was so surely slipping, had she been living sparely, and he never even noticed whether she had enough to eat? In his misery he was ready to accuse himself of having starved Miss Esperance that he might go full-fed himself.

It was rather a silent meal. Miss Esperance did her best to start topics of interest, but his response, though never lacking in urbane attention, was somewhat half-hearted and depressed.

When he had gone upstairs to his own room, Miss Esperance waited with the little bell, which summoned Elsa, still in her hand till that good woman appeared, when she asked anxiously: "Elsa, do you know if anything has occurred to upset Mr. Wycherly? He is not looking at all well to-night."

Elsa shook her head. "I dinna ken, mem, what it'll be, but he never touched his denner, and when he came back this afternoon he looked like he'd been greetin' and greetin' sair."

Elsa paused; Miss Esperance made no answer, but stood still, looking at the lamp on the table, lost in thought.

"It's no the old thing," Elsa added suddenly, lowering her voice.

Miss Esperance put out her hand as if warding off a blow. "Of course not," she exclaimed. "I am surprised, Elsa, that you should so far forget yourself as to refer, to—that time—so long ago, so entirely passed."

The little lady seemed in some subtle fashion to withdraw herself to an immense distance from the homely serving-woman who stood fingering her apron and saying nothing. She knew that she had offended her mistress, and when Miss Esperance was offended, she, usually the gentlest and friendliest of women, became quite unapproachable. She left the room with her usual noiseless tread, and for a good five minutes after she had gone Elsa stood where she was, still fingering her apron and wondering what she could do to make amends.

Mr. Wycherly sat at his knee-hole table far into the night. From the recesses of a drawer that had been locked for years he brought forth papers; long, legal-looking papers, and set himself, for the first time since he came to live with Miss Esperance, to look into his financial position. He made many notes and his brow was furrowed by care and thought, for his brain lent itself with difficulty to the understanding of figures. Still he persevered, and gradually his expression became less pained and perplexed. For once he did not leave his papers scattered all over the table. He arranged them neatly in bundles and put them back again into the drawer and locked it.

When he had finished these unusually orderly arrangements, he pulled up the blind of Montagu's window and looked out toward Arthur's Seat. It was a moonlight night, and something of the large peace of that majestic hill seemed to pass into his soul, for his gentle, scholarly face was no longer troubled, and he whispered as if in prayer: "Thank God, I can at least do that for her. Thank God!"

The tender moonbeams touched Mr. Wycherly's hair, white since he was seven and twenty, to purest silver, and there seemed a benediction in that quiet hour for the little house that held so much of innocence and sorrow and repentance.

CHAPTER VII

ELSA DRIVES THE NAIL HOME

And toward such a full or complete life, a life of various yet select sensation, the most direct and effective auxiliary must be, in a word, Insight.—MARIUS THE EPICUREAN.

When Elsa came to clear away Mr. Wycherly's breakfast next morning she shut the door carefully behind her and stumped—never had woman a heavier foot than Elsa—across to his writing-table, where she stood facing him in silence.

Mr. Wycherly was, as usual, bent over a book, and the book was Roger Ascham's "Schoolmaster." It was his habit ever since he had begun to teach Montagu to read therein for a few minutes every morning that he might start the lessons for the day in a frame of mind "fresh and serenely disposed."

When Elsa planted herself full in his view he had just reached the sentence describing the sixth virtue in a scholar: "He that is naturally bold to ask any question," and was smiling to himself in the thought that both his pupil and the small Edmund fulfilled this condition to the very letter, when he looked up and saw Elsa.

"Sir," said Elsa, "do ye not want an account of your money?"

"No, Elsa," Mr. Wycherly answered, smiling still, although a little startled by the interruption, "not in the least. I probably should not understand it if you gave it to me. Do you want any more? Because, if so, I have some for you." And Mr. Wycherly made as if to open one of the drawers of his table.

"Stop!" Elsa exclaimed, "I've five pound yet, but I'm fear'd. I'd rather you had it back."

"But why?" Mr. Wycherly asked. "There must be many expenses, many extra expenses since the children came——"

"When the bairnies came," said Elsa, looking severely at Mr. Wycherly, "you gave me three ten-pound notes, and ever since I've been deceiving the mistress. Twenty-five pounds have I spent in groceries and odds and ends, and she so surprised—like that the bairns didna' mak' so great a difference—and I just daurna gae on. I'm fear'd. If she was ever to ken—and she's that gleg in the uptak, she'll ken somehow, an' it's me she'll blame, and no you."

Elsa's voice broke. The favour of her mistress was very precious to her, and as yet she could not feel that Miss Esperance had quite forgiven her for her indiscretion of the night before. Mr. Wycherly had obtained quite a large sum of money for the valuable books he sold when he and Miss Esperance went to fetch the children, and on their return he had given thirty pounds to Elsa, bidding her get any extras that might be necessary, without troubling her mistress. At the time Elsa had taken the money willingly enough, for she felt that it would be more usefully expended in her hands than if Mr. Wycherly kept it. "He'll just waste it on some haver of a bit book," she said to herself, and salved her conscience with this reflection; and it had, undoubtedly, tided the little household over a difficult time. But now, she felt, this cooking of the household books could not go on. It must come to an end with the money, and her mistress would wonder why, all at once, the weekly expenses had increased so mightily. Searching inquiries would be made. Elsa knew that she could not lie to Miss Esperance, and she came to the conclusion that as the money was his, it would be better that Mr. Wycherly should make the necessary explanation and bear the blame. She would be his accomplice in this innocent deception no longer.

Therefore did she take from her pocket a screw of paper which she unfolded, displaying the five sovereigns wrapped in it, and laid them down on Mr. Wycherly's desk in a row.

"I can give an account for every penny of the twenty-five pound," said Elsa, turning away from the table, "and you maun just tell her the truth—sir. The tradesman's books'll be gey and big this week," she added, significantly.

Mr. Wycherly leant back in his chair and gazed helplessly at Elsa, who was now removing his breakfast things with her customary clatter. She would not meet his eye, for an uneasy feeling that she had "gone back on him" to a certain extent, disturbed her, and she was more than usually unapproachable in consequence.

She had finished clearing the table and was about to depart with the tray when Mr. Wycherly spoke: "Elsa," he said, "you had better take this money and use it as you did the other. You are quite right that Miss Esperance must know. It is an impertinence on our part to do anything without her knowledge: but I hope—I sincerely hope that in the future Miss Esperance will permit me to act as guardian to her great-nephews in more than name; that she will give me the right to take my share—in whatever may be necessary. But be reassured as to this, Elsa, I will not allow you to be blamed for what, after all, was wholly my fault: a grievous fault in taste, I confess: but it was done hastily, and, to be quite candid, I had wholly forgotten the circumstance until you very properly reminded me of it."

Mr. Wycherly spoke earnestly, and while he was talking Elsa had laid down the tray again on the centre table. She made no answer to this unusually long speech from him, but stood with her hard old face set like a flint, wholly expressionless, till she remarked suddenly and irrelevantly: "Could you tak' your breakfast at eight o'clock instead o' nine, sir?"

"Certainly," Mr. Wycherly replied, rather astonished at this abrupt, change of subject, "if you will be kind enough to call me rather earlier. Those little people wake me in excellent time."

"Would you let the mistress come here to her breakfast wi' you?"

Mr. Wycherly rose to his feet. "Do you think Miss Esperance would so far honour me, Elsa?"

Elsa and Mr. Wycherly stood looking at one another across the room. Suddenly she bent her eyes upon the carpet and spoke in a low, monotonous voice.

"Sir," she said, "it's like this. The mistress never gets a proper breakfast for those wee bairns——"

"I can well believe that," Mr. Wycherly interrupted.

"Now if you, sir" (it was surprising how fluently the 'sir' came to Elsa just then), "would just say that you'd like your breakfast a wee thing sooner in the morning and would ask the mistress, would she no have hers wi' you for the company. Then me an' Robina'll see that the wee boys has theirs. Don't you think, sir, you'd eat more yersel', if ye was no read—readin' a' the time? If ye'd just tell the mistress that? It's dull-like, isn't it, to eat yer lane?"

Elsa picked up her tray and hastened from the room, feeling that do as she would, she and Mr. Wycherly were doomed to be fellow-conspirators.

The sun came out and shone on the five sovereigns lying on the writing-table, and Montagu, at that moment coming in to his lessons, spied them.

"What a lot of money!" he exclaimed. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I hope," said Mr. Wycherly, quite gaily, "that I am going to buy large pieces of happiness with it."

"Can you buy happiness?" Montagu asked wonderingly, ever desirous to search out any doubt.

"No," Mr. Wycherly said decidedly, "not the best kinds, but it sometimes happens that one can buy useful things that help—to a certain degree—in obtaining happiness: and it is those useful things I hope to buy."

"Useful things," Montagu repeated in a disappointed tone, "like pinafores? Those sort of things wouldn't make me happy." Montagu loathed the blue pinafores enforced by Miss Esperance, and considered it a degradation to wear one.

"I'm not sure that I shall buy pinafores," said Mr. Wycherly; "they are not the only useful things in the world."

"Useful things are always dull," Montagu persisted.

"On the contrary," Mr. Wycherly replied, "useful things are sometimes full of the most exquisite romance."

That day early after lunch he called upon Lady Alicia Carruthers. She was at home and alone, and he stayed with her nearly all the afternoon. Lady Alicia would not let him go till he had had a cup of tea, and this marked an epoch in the life of Mr. Wycherly at Remote, for it was the first time he had broken bread in a neighbour's house.

Shortly after this he astonished his relatives by suddenly demanding entire control of his property. He sent for the family lawyer, a certain Mr. Woodhouse, and went into his affairs with a thoroughness and an amount of legal acumen that quite amazed that worthy man.

Mr. Wycherly's brothers were by no means pleased. For many years—ever since he had, much against their will, and in direct opposition to the advice and warnings showered upon him, resigned his fellowship and withdrawn himself finally from the scene of all his former interests—he had been well content to spend about half his little income while the remainder accumulated under their careful stewardship, presumably for their benefit and that of their children. He had asked no questions and appeared, as indeed he was, quite contented with the arrangement. So entirely had he accepted existing conditions, that when he wanted money in a hurry, in order to see that Miss Esperance and the children should make the journey in decent comfort, he had sold his most precious books instead of telegraphing to his solicitor.

But with the advent of Archie's children Mr. Wycherly was completely shaken out of his groove. His humble desire to hide his shame from the eyes of men (for to him, even in times when occasional excess was regarded by the majority less severely than it is now, it meant disgrace and dishonour) gave way to the more ardent desire that these boys might take their place in the world he had left; see, and be seen, and, if possible, seize all the opportunities that he himself had thrown away.

Mr. Woodhouse had travelled all the way from Shrewsbury to Edinburgh to confer with Mr. Wycherly, and he stayed with Lady Alicia, for the public house at Burnhead was of a very humble order, having no bedroom to offer to the wayfaring stranger. Like many other people, he had fallen under the charm of Miss Esperance, and he not only acquiesced, but positively encouraged Mr. Wycherly in all his plans for the disposal of his property. It is quite possible that he was not sorry to see his other clients of that name disappointed. "They've kept him short all these years, when they had no earthly right to, just because he and the old lady are as unworldly as a pair of babies—and now, after all their scheming and saving, the whole of that money will go to benefit her relations," said Mr. Woodhouse to Lady Alicia, with a chuckle. "It's poetic justice, that's what I call it."

Mr. Woodhouse was standing on the hearthrug warming his coat-tails. He had returned for the night from Remote, and was quite prepared to enjoy a comfortable chat with Lady Alicia and her pretty daughter, Margaret, who were sitting by the fire knitting diligently.

"Do you happen to know?" asked Lady Alicia, who had never dared ask the question of Miss Esperance, "what caused the—er—mental break-down, that made Mr. Wycherly leave Oxford?"

The keen eyes under the bushy eyebrows twinkled with amusement as Mr. Woodhouse surveyed his hostess, who was, he very well knew, devoured by curiosity.

"I've never really heard the rights of it," he said cautiously, "but from what I have heard I should gather that it was, as usual, saving your presence, my dear young lady, a woman who was at the bottom of the mischief."

"Oh!" exclaimed pretty Margaret, "how very sad. Did she die?"

"She was," said Mr. Woodhouse, gazing into the gracious, pitiful young face uplifted to his, "a hard, scheming woman, beautiful, of course, not over young; in fact, I think she was older than he was. He, then, was considered the handsomest man in Oxford, very distinguished, you know, with his white hair and young face, all the Wycherlys go gray very early. At that time there seemed no honour in the university to which he might not aspire. He was popular in society——"

"He has the most beautiful manners," Lady Alicia remarked, laying down her knitting and preparing to enjoy herself.

"He had then. In fact, in Oxford he was looked upon as a very brilliant and rising young man; and the fact that he had some private means made it possible for him to go into Society, with a big 'S,' rather more than is usual in such cases."

"I always felt," said Lady Alicia, bridling, "that he had at some time or another belonged to the great world. But what of the lady?"

"She came down for Commemoration Week; stayed, I think, with the Dean of Christ Church, and made a dead set at Wycherly. He went down before her like a ninepin, and they were engaged, and there was 'a marriage arranged to take place,' before the week was out."

"Why didn't it take place?" asked pretty Margaret eagerly.

"Because, my dear young lady, the lady in question happened to fascinate a richer man just a week before the wedding day, and poor Wycherly discovered the whole affair in some fashion that was a very great shock to him. The only thing he was ever heard to say about it was that it hurt him rather to hear of her marriage to the other man while he was still under the impression that she was engaged to him."

"She wasn't worth grieving over," Lady Alicia cried indignantly.

"Poor Mr. Wycherly!" pretty Margaret said softly. "And he is so kind and gentle always."

"I hope her marriage turned out badly," said Lady Alicia vindictively.

"Your ladyship's pious hope was amply fulfilled," Mr. Woodhouse replied.

"Won't you tell us who she was?" Lady Alicia demanded in honeyed tones.

"Alas, dear Lady Alicia, that I must not do. She is dead—de mortuis nil nisi bonum, you know—may she rest in peace!"

Lady Alicia folded up her knitting. "In that case," she said somewhat abruptly, "we must not keep you out of your bed any longer, you have had a tiring day."

* * * * *

"Is he quite capable of managing his own affairs?" Mr. Wycherly's brothers eagerly asked Mr. Woodhouse on his return some three days later.

"Perfectly capable," answered that gentleman decidedly. "Indeed, he shows quite remarkable business capacity, considering how long it is since he has undertaken anything of the kind. It's a thousand pities he resigned his fellowship. I would not advise you to attempt any sort of interference with him—for, however reluctant I might be to give evidence as to the impropriety of such a course, I should be obliged in common honesty to do so. It was certainly Quixotic to resign his fellowship when he did, but it could not be brought up as a proof of mental incapacity at this time of day."

Mr. Wycherly's brothers did not fail to remind him at this juncture that, had he listened to them, he would still be enjoying the income of his fellowship. "No one," they had reiterated, "could take it from him while he lived. Once a fellow, always a fellow—a fellowship was a freehold, and what did it matter to the authorities in Oxford what he did north of the Tweed?"

But Mr. Wycherly had loved his college too dearly to bring shame upon her, and if he could not serve, neither would he accept wage. And now that he had every reason to wish that his income was larger, it was the one step in all the inglorious past that he did not regret.

Through the family solicitor he demanded an account of all monies belonging to himself: explaining with the utmost clearness that he intended to educate both Montagu and Edmund "as befitted their position in life," that he wished to adopt both of them, and that, with their aunt's consent, the elder of the two was to take his name, and inherit whatever he could leave him.

"It won't be much," he said to Mr. Woodhouse, when he was discussing ways and means with him, "for I intend Montagu to go to Winchester and New College, and of course Edmund, should he go into the navy, will need a considerable allowance for years to come. But whatever there is, that they are to have, and, above all, I beg you to make it perfectly clear to Miss Esperance that she need be under no apprehension as to their future."

For the sake of "Archie's boys" Mr. Wycherly even bethought him of old friends from whose kindly questioning eyes he would fain have hidden. Insensibly, too, he accustomed himself to dwell fondly upon the past, that pleasant past once so full of success, of dignity, and of the intellectual honours so dear to him; that happy time preceding those dark years of weakness and shame and mental degradation.

Thus he found himself telling Montagu all about William of Wykeham of pious memory: of the "Founder's Crozier" and the "Great West Window," and of the Warden's library at New College where they keep the Founder's Jewel. Day by day Montagu would revert to these entrancing topics till Oxford rivalled even Troy in his affections, and the knowledge that he himself was destined one day to go and live in this wonderful place gave an even greater zeal to his studies than before.

Moreover, pictures of this same Oxford were found in boxes stored away, and were brought forth and, at Montagu's request, hung up, till what with books and what with engravings there was hardly an inch of drab-coloured wall to be seen.

As to the matter of breakfast—Elsa was so piteous in her account of how that meal was neglected by Mr. Wycherly, and he proclaimed his loneliness in such moving terms, that Miss Esperance came to the conclusion that he was really far more in need of her supervision than the little boys, and it ended in their breakfasting together in his room at eight o'clock, and Mr. Wycherly, on the morning that initiated this new arrangement, was as nervous and excited as an undergraduate who expects "ladies to lunch" in his rooms for the first time.

CHAPTER VIII

EDMUND RECHRISTENS MR. WYCHERLY

"Time was," the golden head

Irrevocably said;

"But time which none can bind,

While flowing fast away, leaves love behind."

R.L.S.

"It is just a year to-day since the children came," said Miss Esperance, smiling across the table at Mr. Wycherly, as they sat together at breakfast in his room.

"In some ways," he replied thoughtfully, "it seems as though they must always have been here: it is impossible to conceive of life without them—now. In others, the time has gone so fast that it might be but yesterday they came."

"When I was younger," Miss Esperance went on in her gentle, old voice, "I used to look forward with such dread to a lonely old age. I used to think 'what would life be if my father and my brothers died?'; and one by one they were all taken from me, and Archie was the last of our family—and he is dead. But the Lord has been very merciful. First he sent you to me, and then the children to us both: 'Goodness and mercy all my life have surely followed me.'"

Miss Esperance paused, still smiling in the happy confidence of the peace that wrapped her round.

If Mr. Wycherly did not answer it was not because he did not agree with Miss Esperance as to the wonderful workings of Providence. But speech on such subjects was to him almost impossible; and she, looking wistfully into his face, partly realised this. But she was not quite satisfied. Religion was, for her, so entirely the mainspring of her every impulse, her every action, that it was impossible for her in any way to separate it from the most ordinary daily doings; and to her it was as easy and as natural to confess her faith and her deepest feelings with regard to these matters as it was impossible to him. This inability on his part formed to a certain extent a barrier between them: a barrier which can only be broken down by mutual consent; and while he would have done, as in very truth he did, anything in the world to give her pleasure and peace of mind: this thing which she would have valued most, he could not give her. He could not talk about his religious views.

In the silence that followed it is possible that there recurred to the minds of both an incident not wholly without bearing on their future intercourse. One Sabbath evening, shortly after he had gone to live with Miss Esperance at Remote, she asked him to "engage in prayer" at family worship—the "family" consisting of herself and Elsa.

Mr. Wycherly complied readily enough, for he knew plenty of prayers: but when he prayed, he prayed for "the bishops and curates and all congregations committed to their charge"; he prayed for the "good estate of the Catholic Church here upon earth"; and, worst of all—it being the collect for the day—he prayed that "as thy Holy Angels always do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth." Never was such a scandal in a strictly Presbyterian household. Elsa proclaimed throughout the village that Miss Esperance had been induced to harbour an undoubted Puseyite, and it would not have surprised her in the least if he had prayed for the Pope himself.

And Miss Esperance, knowing the length and strength of Elsa's tongue, felt herself constrained to explain (she did it with considerable humour) to the Reverend Peter Gloag what had really happened. Whereupon the minister dismissed Mr. Wycherly and all his works as being "fettered by formula?": and to the great relief of this prisoner in the chains of ecclesiasticism he was never again asked to conduct family worship. He innocently wondered why, for he imagined with some complacency that he had acquitted himself gracefully in what had been rather a trying ordeal.

The tender smile of Miss Esperance, as she reflected upon her many mercies, had changed to a smile of no less tender amusement as she recalled those by-gone days, and Mr. Wycherly, ever quick to notice any change in the dear old face he loved so well, felt that he might now venture upon more familiar ground.

"You look amused," he remarked; "would it be a safe conjecture to say that you are probably thinking of Edmund?"

"That reminds me," Miss Esperance exclaimed, without committing herself. "I do wish that we could induce that dear little boy not to call you 'man.' It is so disrespectful."

It had never struck Mr. Wycherly in that light. In fact he had found considerable secret comfort in the fact that Edmund, at all events, had from the very first considered him deserving of that epithet. Mr. Wycherly was sensitive, and he knew perfectly well in what sort of estimation most of the inhabitants of Burnhead held him.

"Do you think it matters?" he asked mildly, "what such a baby calls me?"

"Not to you, certainly," Miss Esperance replied promptly; "but I do think it matters for him. He is three now, and it's time he knew better."

"Surely three is not a very great age?" Mr. Wycherly pleaded.

"It is old enough for Edmund to want his own way, and generally to take it," Miss Esperance rejoined as she rose from the table; "and it is old enough for him to learn that he must be dutiful and obedient."

As Mr. Wycherly held the door open for her to go out, he remarked deferentially, "But, don't you think, dear Miss Esperance, that either 'Mr.' or 'Sir' is a somewhat formal mode of address to exact from such a baby?"

"I called my honoured father 'Sir' from the time I could speak at all, and when I was young it would never for one moment have been permitted to us to address any grown-up person otherwise than with respect," Miss Esperance continued, as she paused in the doorway. "I will see what I can do about it this very day. I feel sure that if we reason with that dear child, we can induce him to find some more suitable way of addressing you."

When Miss Esperance had gone, and Mr. Wycherly had shut his door, he shook his head and laughed. Two or three times lately he had tried a fall with Edmund, and that lusty infant invariably came off an easy victor.

It was the daily custom for both the little boys to visit Mr. Wycherly for a few minutes after breakfast, when biscuits were doled out and there was much cheery good-fellowship. Mr. Wycherly himself made periodical visits to Edinburgh to purchase these biscuits, which were adorned with pink and white sugar, and were of a delectable flavour. Once the biscuits were consumed—they had three each—Montagu settled down to his lessons, and Edmund, ever unwillingly, departed with Robina.

Through the open window that morning there floated an imperative baby voice. "See man," it insisted, "me go and see man."

Mr. Wycherly looked out and Edmund looked up. He stretched out his fat arms, balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other, as though poised for flight, while in the thrush-like tones that were always irresistible to Mr. Wycherly he gave his usual cry of "Uppie! Uppie! deah man."

When Edmund called him "deah man" there was nothing on earth that Mr. Wycherly could withhold. "Bring Edmund up, Montagu," he said, leaning out of the window. "We'll have a holiday to-day, it's a kind of birthday. Just a year since you came."

But the gentle voice of Miss Esperance interposed. "Edmund must say 'Please, Mr. Wycherly,' or 'please, sir,' then he can go up."

"See man, me go and see man," Edmund persisted, absolutely ignoring his aunt's admonition and jumping up and down as though he could reach Mr. Wycherly that way.

"No, Edmund," Miss Esperance said firmly; "you must say, 'Please, Mr. Wycherly."

Edmund looked at his aunt and his round chubby face expressed the utmost defiance. "I sall say man, and I will go to man," he announced loudly and distinctly, "he's my man, and I 'ove him—I don't 'ove you," he added emphatically.

"Edmund, my son, come here." There was no resisting the resolution in that very gentle voice. Miss Esperance seated herself on the garden seat under Mr. Wycherly's window, and Edmund came at her bidding, to stand in front of her, square and sturdy and rebellious.

Mr. Wycherly had withdrawn from the window when Miss Esperance first began her expostulation with Edmund. Now it struck him as rather shabby to leave her to wrestle with that young sinner alone over a matter which certainly referred to himself; so he hastened downstairs and joined her in the garden.

On his appearance Edmund began his dance again, and his petition of "Uppie! Uppie!"

Mr. Wycherly went and sat on the seat beside Miss Esperance, trying hard to look stern and judicial, and failing signally, while the chubby culprit made ineffectual attempts to climb upon his knee.

"Edmund must say 'Please, Mr. Wycherly,' or 'Please, sir,'" Miss Esperance repeated.

"Peese, Mittah Chahley," echoed Edmund in tones that would have melted a heart of stone.

Now if "man" was a disrespectful and familiar mode of address, "Chahlee" seemed a singularly inappropriate pseudonym for Mr. Wycherly.

Even Montagu giggled.

The matutinal service of biscuits was long overdue, Edmund grew impatient, and the corners of his rosy mouth drooped. "I've said 'Chahley,'" he announced reproachfully, "and you don't take me."

Mr. Wycherly looked beseechingly at Miss Esperance. "I think he has done his best," he said in deprecating tones, "it is a difficult name for a baby."

"Chahlee! Chahlee!" chirped Edmund, beginning to dance again. "Uppie! Uppie!" then turning to his aunt—"I've said 'im."

"You haven't said it right—but perhaps—" Miss Esperance wavered.

Edmund marched up to his aunt, placed both his dimpled elbows on her knees, and gazing earnestly into her face with bunches of unshed tears still hanging on his lashes, remarked vindictively: "I wis a gate bid ball would come and bounce at you."

Miss Esperance burst out laughing and stooped to kiss the red, indignant baby-face. "All the same, my dear son, you must learn to do what you are told."

"Me go wiv—Chahlee," Edmund announced triumphantly, as Mr. Wycherly lifted him up.

"Am I to call you Charlie, too?" asked Montagu, who was rather jealous where his tutor's favour was concerned.

"Pray, don't!" exclaimed that gentleman hastily.

"Chahlee, Chahlee," crowed Edmund from the safe vantage ground of Mr. Wycherly's arms as he was carried upstairs. "Deah man, Chahlee."

Miss Esperance sat on where she was. Her interference had certainly not improved matters, and she was really perturbed. That she should in any way, however inadvertently and innocently, have rendered Mr. Wycherly in the smallest degree ridiculous was most distressing to her.

Had the baby done his best, or was it but one more instance of his supreme subtlety in the avoidance of doing what he was told?

Miss Esperance adored Edmund. He was a Bethune from the top curl of his fair hair to his small, straight, pink toes. Handsome, ruddy, with very blue eyes; eyes that changed in colour with his every emotion, even as the sea so many of his forbears had served changes with the passing hours; he was the image of Archie Bethune, his father. He was like her brother, whose name he bore, and still stronger was his likeness to the admiral, her father, that generous and choleric sailor whose memory she so revered.

Yet no one knew better than Miss Esperance the faults of the Bethune temperament. Had she not suffered from them herself in the past? And she was painfully anxious to keep in check the wilful impulsiveness so strongly marked in her great-nephew—that taking of their own way, no matter at what cost in tribulation to themselves or suffering to others. How many Bethunes had it ruined in the past! And yet if she rebuked him now it might confuse the baby: and above all, Miss Esperance desired to be just in her dealings with these small creatures committed to her charge.

As she sat in the sunshine, with the children's voices borne to her on the soft winds of early summer, she prayed for guidance.

Suddenly the children's voices ceased, for Mr. Wycherly was reading aloud. It was his habit to read to them odd scraps of anything that had happened to please himself, while they munched their biscuits. Sometimes they, or at all events Montagu, understood; as often they did not: but both found some sort of pleasure in the fine English gracefully read. Miss Esperance listened, and as if in answer to her prayer she heard, in Mr. Wycherly's gentle, cultivated tones, these words: "Love is fitter than fear, gentleness better than beating, to bring up a child rightly in learning."

So for a while Baby Edmund was allowed to call Mr. Wycherly very much what he pleased. He occasionally conceded something to convention by addressing him as "Mittah man" or "Mittah Chahlee"—but as a rule he took his own way; finally adopting for Mr. Wycherly Elsa's usual style of address toward himself, namely, "Dearie."

It had never occurred to Mr. Wycherly as possible that anyone should address him as "Dearie," and this particular term of endearment did sound somewhat of an anachronism.

But he liked it, he liked it amazingly: and seeing this, Miss Esperance interfered no more.

In the end, however, it was Montagu who found a pet name for Mr. Wycherly. "What are you to me?" the little boy asked one day. "Are you an uncle?"

"No," said Mr. Wycherly, "I am your guardian."

"What's a guardian?"

"Someone who takes care of a child who has lost his parents."

"May I call you guardian?"

"Certainly, if you wish it."

"May Edmund?"

"Assuredly."

"Then we will—it's more friendlier than 'Mr.,' don't you think?"

And it ended in Guardian being abbreviated into 'Guardie,' so that Mr. Wycherly was, after all, the only member of the household who was permitted a diminutive.

CHAPTER IX

CUPID ABROAD

"Cupid abroad was lated in the night,

His wings were wet with ranging in the rain;

Harbour he sought, to me he took his flight,

To dry his plumes," I heard the boy complain;

"I ope'd the door, and granted his desire.

I rose myself, and made the wag a fire."

Everyone in the neighbourhood of Burnhead called Lady Alicia's youngest daughter "Bonnie Margaret," so full of charm and gaiety and gentleness was she. Not all the year was Lady Alicia at the "big hoose": since the death of her husband—worthy David Carruthers, late Advocate—she always wintered in Edinburgh; but with May, Bonnie Margaret came back to Burnhead, unless, indeed, as had happened lately, she spent that month in London with one of her married sisters. But at all events some part of the summer saw her back at Burnhead, and the sun seemed to shine the brighter for her coming.

Like everyone else, she was very fond of Miss Esperance, and she often came to Remote to play with the little boys who whole-heartedly approved of her. Mr. Wycherly, too, was fond of Bonnie Margaret, and somehow, recently, she had seemed to come across him very often during his walks with Montagu. She would join them, and sometimes spend a whole long afternoon in the little copse sitting beside Mr. Wycherly at the foot of his favourite tree, while Montagu played at the brook.

Very shyly and with many most becoming blushes, Margaret confided to Mr. Wycherly that she had met a nephew of his during her visits to her sister. Mr. Wycherly was not in the least interested in his nephew, but he was interested in anything Bonnie Margaret chose to talk about, and the nephew acquired a fictitious importance for this reason.

This nephew was, Margaret carefully explained, an exceedingly clever young man, who had taken a good degree—but he didn't want to take orders, and he hated school-mastering—he had tried it—and now he had gone into a friend's business as a wine merchant, and his people were very much annoyed. What was Mr. Wycherly's opinion on the subject? And didn't he think it was very noble of this young man to earn his bread in this particular fashion? It had taken many meetings and much elaborate and roundabout explanation upon Margaret's part before this final statement of the situation was reached; and Mr. Wycherly, having in the meantime heard complaints that Bonnie Margaret was very ill to please in the matter of a husband, began to put two and two together. Many swains had sighed at Margaret's shrine, and she had received what her mother called "several quite good offers," but she would have nothing to say to any of them. She was in character fully as decided as Lady Alicia herself. But she was demure and gentle in manner, and instead of fighting for her own way, as is the custom of the strenuous, simply took it quietly, and without vehement declaration of any kind.

When appealed to as to his opinion of the nobility of his nephew's conduct in thus plunging into trade, Margaret and Mr. Wycherly were sitting on a low wall, watching Edmund and Mause and Montagu disport themselves in the hay-field it bordered.

The summer sun was warm, and Margaret wore a floppy leghorn hat which threw a most becoming shade over her serious grey eyes; eyes with long black lashes in somewhat startling contrast to her very fair hair. Mr. Wycherly particularly admired her Greek profile, her short upper lip, the lovely oval of her cheek and chin. Still more did he appreciate her sweet consideration and gentleness; and for the first time since he came to live in Scotland he found himself wishing that he knew something of this nephew who so plainly occupied a prominent position in the thoughts of this kind and beautiful girl.

"Of course," Mr. Wycherly remarked guardedly, "he is perfectly right to earn his own living in the way that seems best to him, though whether it was absolutely necessary to run counter to the prejudices of his relatives in order to do so is not quite clear."

"But you would not, would you, look down on anyone just because he happened to be in trade? If he is a cultured gentleman already, his being in trade can't make him less of a cultured gentleman, can it?"

"Of course not," Mr. Wycherly agreed, "but I think I can understand, perhaps, some slight reason for annoyance on the part of his people. You see, had he announced earlier this extreme desire to go into business, it is hardly likely that they would have given him an expensive education at the University. He was, you tell me, five years at Oxford?"

"He didn't waste his time there," Margaret answered eagerly, "he took all sorts of honours: but he loathes teaching—" Margaret stopped, for Mr. Wycherly was looking at her with a curiously amused expression which seemed to say, "How is it that you are so remarkably conversant with the likes and dislikes of this young man?"

She leant over the wall to gather some of the big horse gowans that grew in the field, so that her face was hidden from Mr. Wycherly. She fastened a little bunch of them into her waistband; then she said in the detached tone of one who seeks for information merely from curiosity:

"Don't you think that at some time or other one has to settle what to do with one's life, regardless of whether it is pleasing to other people or not—I mean in very big and important things?"

Mr. Wycherly, who thought she was still referring to his nephew, cordially agreed that for most of us such a course at some time or other is a necessity.

As it happened, however, Bonnie Margaret was not talking of his nephew, but of herself. Mr. Wycherly remembered this in the following October when, Lady Alicia having removed her household to Edinburgh, a startling rumour shook the village to its very foundations—a rumour to the effect that Bonnie Margaret had one night "taken the train" and was married next morning to somebody in the south of England.

Miss Esperance was much shocked and perturbed, the more so that she felt it devolved upon her, and her alone, to break this agitating intelligence to Mr. Wycherly. For was not a relative of his own the chief culprit? Miss Esperance could never understand Mr. Wycherly's indifference toward everything that concerned his relations.

She had heard the news just before supper, but she waited until that meal was finished lest her communication might spoil his appetite.

It was their pleasant custom to sit and chat for a while every evening while Mr. Wycherly drank his single glass of port, and cracked some nuts, which he generally bestowed next morning upon the little boys.

He held up his glass of wine to the light, and even in the midst of her uneasiness Miss Esperance noted with pleasure how steady was the long, slender hand that held the glass.

"I have heard," Miss Esperance began with a deep sigh, "some most distressing news to-day about certain good friends of yours."

"Is Mrs. Gloag worse?" Mr. Wycherly asked anxiously, for the minister's wife was very delicate, and was often quite seriously ill.

"No, no, nobody is ill; but I fear that our good friend, Lady Alicia, is in very great trouble. Margaret——"

"Has married against her mother's wish?" Mr. Wycherly interrupted quickly.

"That's just what she has done—but how did you guess?"

"And she has married," Mr. Wycherly continued, "a nephew of mine. If I mistake not, Margaret was twenty-one only the other day."

"It seems," Miss Esperance went on, much astonished at the calmness with which Mr. Wycherly received these grievous tidings, "that this young man proposed to Margaret some time ago; but that Lady Alicia wouldn't hear of any engagement. He asked for Margaret again this summer, and was again refused: though Margaret told her mother that she intended to marry him and considered herself engaged to him in spite of everything. And, as you say, directly she came of age she has done it."

Mr. Wycherly had laid down his glass of port untasted, when Miss Esperance first began to speak. Now he lifted the decanter and poured out another, offering it to Miss Esperance. "My dear friend," he exclaimed eagerly, "they are married. Nothing can alter that. Let us drink pretty Margaret's health, and wish her all prosperity and happiness, and may the man she has chosen try to be worthy of her!"

Miss Esperance demurred: but Mr. Wycherly continued to lean across the table with the glass of wine held out toward her, and he looked so pleading, and she so loved to gratify him, that at last, though a little under protest, she consented to drink this toast, and took one sip from the proffered glass of port.

"I wish I could feel that it will turn out well," she said wistfully.

"She must love him right well," Mr. Wycherly said thoughtfully, "and she is not a foolish girl. She has judgment and discretion."

"Where love is concerned," said Miss Esperance, "judgment and discretion generally go to the wall."

And Mr. Wycherly could find no arguments in disproof of this statement.

Lady Alicia made a special journey to Remote for the express purpose of reproaching Mr. Wycherly with the conduct of a nephew he had never seen.

Miss Esperance was out; Mr. Wycherly, as usual, reading in his room. There Lady Alicia sought him and plunged at once into a history of the "entanglement," as she called it, concluding with these words: "I told her never to mention that young man to me again, and she never did, so of course I concluded that, like a sensible girl, she had put the whole thing out of her head: but the hussy has married him, married him without ever a wedding present or a single new gown, and what can I do? A girl, too, who might have married anyone, by far the prettiest of the four, and look how well the rest have married!"

"She must love him very much," Mr. Wycherly said dreamily. "Pretty Margaret, so gentle always and so quiet. What strength, what tenacity of purpose under that docile feminine exterior! Dear Lady Alicia, she is more like you than any of your other daughters."

"Like me!" Lady Alicia almost shouted. "Do you mean to say I could have run away with any bottle-nosed vintner that ever tasted port—I, forsooth!"

"But you told me yourself that he is a gentleman, young and good-looking," Mr. Wycherly expostulated. "If I remember rightly, too, something of a scholar—and Margaret loves him. She has proved that beyond all question. God grant that he is worthy of her love. You can't unmarry them, my dear old friend, and though you will be angry with me, I must tell you that I think it is well you can't. You must forgive them both."

"Never," said Lady Alicia with the greatest determination. "She has chosen her vintner; let her stick to him."

"She will do that in any case," said Mr. Wycherly; "but she will love her mother none the less, and her mother will, presently, love her all the more."

"She will do nothing of the kind," Lady Alicia said with considerable asperity. "You don't seem to realise what a disgraceful thing your nephew has done in abducting my daughter in this fashion."

"I thought you said she went to him," Mr. Wycherly suggested apologetically.

For answer Lady Alicia rose in her wrath and strode out of the room. Mr. Wycherly hastened after her across the little landing and down the curly staircase, but he was not in time to open the front door for her, and she banged it in his face. Mr. Wycherly opened it, and stood on the threshold just in time to hear the little gate at the bottom of the garden give an angry click as it fell behind Lady Alicia's retreating form. He did not attempt to follow her, but stood where he was, wrapped in a reverie so absorbing that he started violently as the green gate slammed again and Lady Alicia bustled up the path holding out her hand, and saying:

"After all, it's not your fault, I don't know why I should scold you; the only redeeming feature in the whole horrible affair is that he's your nephew and therefore cannot be an utter scoundrel, but you must confess it is very hard for me."

Mr. Wycherly took the extended hand and shook it. "You must forgive her," he said gently, "she would never have done it if she hadn't been your daughter; think of the courage and determination——"

"The headstrong folly and foolhardiness," Lady Alicia interrupted. "I cannot imagine why you keep suggesting I could ever have done such a disgraceful thing—I always had far too much——"

"Given the same circumstances, you would have behaved in exactly the same way," Mr. Wycherly interrupted. "My dear Lady Alicia, you know you would."

"You are a ridiculous and obstinate man," said Lady Alicia; "much learning hath made you mad, and you know nothing whatever about women."

All the same she smiled, and she left her hand in Mr. Wycherly's. It was not unpleasant to her to be considered capable of romance; her life had been so safe and seemly always, a little monotonous and commonplace, perhaps, but she had once been young.

"I don't know much," Mr. Wycherly answered humbly; "but surely character is the same in man or woman, and given a certain character a certain line of conduct is inevitable."

"And you think it is inevitable that I should forgive Margaret?"

"Assuredly," said Mr. Wycherly.

"As I said before"—here Lady Alicia thought fit to withdraw her hand—"you are an ignorant man: but we won't quarrel. Time will show whether you or I know most about me."

She turned to walk to the gate where her carriage was waiting. He helped her in and shut the door upon her in absolute silence. Then, just as the man was driving off, he asked: "What do you think they would like for a wedding present?"

"Man, you are incorrigible," exclaimed Lady Alicia, but her brow was smooth and her eyes smiling.

Mr. Wycherly stood at the green gate for some time, lost hi thought. As he turned to walk up the path to the house he said aloud: "I should like to know what that young man has done that he should be singled out by the gods for such supreme good fortune."

When the days grew long once more Lady Alicia came back to the "big house," but no fair-haired Margaret came to play with the little boys.

"Where is she?" asked Montagu of his tutor. "Why doesn't she come?"

"She is married," said Mr. Wycherly; "she has to stay with her husband."

"When I marry," said Montagu, "I shall marry somebody like Margaret; then she'll stay with me and I shall never be lonely."

"When you marry," Mr. Wycherly said very seriously, "take care of just one thing. Take care that she is kind."

"I'd like her to be beautiful, too," Montagu said eagerly, "beautiful and tall, like Margaret."

"I hope she will be beautiful, but kindness comes first," and Mr. Wycherly spoke with conviction, as one who knew.

"How can one tell if she is kind?" Montagu asked.

"Compare her with your aunt, Montagu: if she stands such comparison, she is all your best desires need seek."

"I will remember," Montagu said solemnly, "kind and beautiful—but the kindness must come first. I wish Margaret hadn't been in such a hurry, she would have done beautifully."

CHAPTER X

THE SABBATH

He ordered a' things late and air';

He ordered folk to stand at prayer

(Although I cannae just mind where

He gave the warnin').

An' pit pomatum on their hair

On Sabbath mornin'.

R.L.S.

The Sabbath day at Burnhead was a long, long day. A day wholly given up to "the public and private exercises of God's worship."

For Montagu, indeed, the shadow of the Sabbath began to steal over the horizon as early as Friday night: and it was only when he woke on Monday morning secure in the consciousness that the first day of the week was safely passed, that life assumed again its habitually cheerful aspect.

Miss Esperance was a staunch Presbyterian, and belonged to the strictest sect of the so-called Free Kirk. Therefore did she consider it her duty to take Montagu twice to church in addition to superintending his instruction in Bible history and the shorter catechism.

Montagu liked the scripture lessons well enough and found it no hardship to read the Bible aloud to his aunt for hours at a time; but nearly four hours' church with only the blessed interval of dinner in between was a heavy discipline for even a naturally quiet small boy, and sometimes Montagu was, inwardly, very rebellious.

Mr. Wycherly begged him off the afternoon service as often as he could as a companion for Edmund, volunteering to look after both children so that Robina, as well as Elsa, could attend church. Mr. Wycherly was an Episcopalian, and as there was no "English" church within walking distance, he said he read the service to himself every Sunday morning.

When Edmund was four years old, Miss Esperance decided that it was time he, too, should share the benefit of the Reverend Peter Gloag's ministrations. Edmund appeared pleased at the suggestion, for it was, like his knickerbockers, to a certain extent an acknowledgment that he had arrived at boy's estate. Montagu went to church, and why not he? It was evidently the correct thing to do, and although he could not remember to have seen his brother particularly uplifted by his privileges in that respect, nobody else seemed much exhilarated either. Hitherto, he had spent his Sunday mornings largely in the society of Mr. Wycherly, who, as all toys were locked up in a tall cupboard on Saturday night, connived at all sorts of queer games, invented on the spur of the moment by the ingenious Edmund.

"I'm goin' to kirk! I'm goin' to kirk!" Edmund chanted gaily on the appointed day.

He wore a new white sailor suit with pockets, and in one pocket was a penny to "pirle" in the plate: in the other a wee packet of Wotherspoon's peppermints for refreshment during the sermon. His curly hair was brushed till it shone like the brass knocker on the front door when Elsa had newly cleaned it, and his round, rosy face was framed by a large new sailor hat that looked like a substantial sort of halo. White socks and neat black shoes with straps completed Edmund's toilet, and his aunt thought that never yet had the Bethune family possessed a worthier scion.

Mr. Wycherly assisted to direct Edmund's fat, pink fingers into a tight, white cotton glove, and stood at the green gate watching the departure of Miss Esperance and her great-nephews, till the small black figure, with a little white sailor on either side, had vanished from his view.

He marvelled greatly at the temerity of Miss Esperance in taking Edmund to church at this tender age, though it was not the age that mattered so much as Edmund. What Miss Esperance called the "Bethune temperament" was very marked in that sunny-haired small boy, and it was apt to manifest itself unexpectedly, wholly regardless of time or place.

The house seemed queerly quiet and deserted as Mr. Wycherly returned to his room. Mause followed him and thrust a cold, wet nose into his hand, looking up at him from under her tangled hair with puzzled, pleading eyes.

"Poor old lady," said Mr. Wycherly, "you are lonely, too, are you? We'll go for a little walk when the bell stops."

The church was a bare, white-washed, barn-like edifice, where none of the windows were ever opened, and the unchanged air was always redolent of hair-oil and strong peppermint.

Edmund smiled and nodded at his friends as he pattered up the aisle to his aunt's pew, and when Andrew Mowat, the precentor, looking unwontedly stern and unapproachable, took his seat under the pulpit, the little boy wondered what could have annoyed him that he looked so cross. On week-days Andrew, who kept the little grocer's shop in the village, was the most sociable and friendly of creatures, and always bestowed "a twa-three acid-drops" on the little boys when they went with Robina to his shop.

But to-day Andrew was far removed from worldly cares or enjoyments, and Edmund listened to him in awed astonishment as he wailed out the tune of the first psalm, "My heart not haughty is, O Lord," to be gradually taken up more or less tunefully by the whole congregation.

For the first half-hour of service Edmund behaved beautifully. He held a large Bible open upside down, with white cotton fingers spread well out over the back. He hummed the tune diligently and not too loud during the first psalm, and stood quite moderately still during the first long prayers.

It was not until the minister said: "Let us read in God's word from the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Kings, beginning at the fifth verse," that the troubles of Miss Esperance really began.

At the announcement of the chapter to be read, there was an instantaneous fluttering and turning over of leaves among the congregation to find their places, and Edmund, zealous to be no whit behind the rest in this pious exercise, fluttered the leaves of his Bible violently to and fro for some time after every one else had settled into seemly silence to follow the reading. Such a noisy rustling did he make that several of the congregation raised their heads and glanced disapprovingly in the direction of Miss Bethune's pew. That gentle lady laid a detaining hand over Edmund's Bible to close it, but he pulled it violently away from her with both hands, opened it again, and held it ostentatiously against his nose, leaning forward to look over the top at Montagu, who sat on the other side of his aunt.

Then to the horror of Miss Esperance, he began to imitate the minister; joining in the reading wherever the oft-repeated "And the rest of the acts of," whoever it happened to be, "are they not written," etc., in low but perfectly audible tones. Edmund evidently looked upon the phrase as a sort of chorus, waited for it, seized upon it, and joined in it gleefully, holding his Bible at arm's length as though he were singing at a concert.

Poor Miss Esperance turned crimson and bent over the little boy, whispering, "You must be perfectly quiet, my dear, you must not say a single word."

Edmund, still holding his Bible stiffly out in front of him, looked reproachfully at his aunt and was quiet for a few minutes. Then came "and the rest of the acts of Pekah and all that he did," which was too many for him. The name was attractive: "Pekah! Pekah! Pekah!" he whispered, then faster: "Pekah, Pekah, Pekah, Pekah, Pekah, Pekah," exactly as he was wont to repeat "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," which the minister's wife herself had taught him.

His aunt laid a firm hand over his mouth and looked at him with all the severity her sweet old face could achieve. He realised that she was not to be trifled with, and set down his Bible on the book-board in front of him with an angry thump, at the same time leaning forward to frown reprovingly at Montagu.

"When will he stop?" he whispered to his aunt, pointing a scornful finger at the minister, "he's making far more noise nor me."

"Hush," murmured Miss Esperance again. For three minutes he was comparatively quiet, then it occurred to him to take off his gloves. This he achieved by holding the end of each cotton finger in his teeth and pulling violently. Then he blew into each one, as he had seen his aunt do with hers, finally squeezing them into a tight ball and cramming them into the tiny pocket of his blouse.

"Pocket" instantly suggested the pockets of his trousers. His penny had been disposed of on entrance, 'twas but a fleeting joy. But the packet of Wotherspoon's sweeties remained. The minister had now engaged in prayer, the congregation was standing up; Edmund's doings were comparatively inconspicuous, and Miss Esperance permitted her thoughts to soar heavenward once more. Edmund arranged the contents of his packet in a neat square on the top of his Bible on the book-board in front of him, and proceeded to taste several of the little white comfits, putting each one back in its place wet and sticky, when he had savoured its sweetness for a minute or two. By accident he knocked one of the unsucked sweeties off the Bible, and it rolled away gaily under the seat. In a moment Edmund had dived after it. He squeezed behind his aunt and could not resist giving one of Montagu's legs a sharp pinch as he beheld those members and nothing more from his somewhat lowly and darksome position. Montagu leapt into the air with a scarcely suppressed yelp, that startled more than Miss Esperance, who, at the same moment, felt an unwonted something shoving against her legs. She feared that some dog had got into the pew, and opened her eyes only to find that one great-nephew had disappeared from her side and was squirming under the seat. She also beheld the neatly arranged rows of sweeties on the top of the Bible.

It took but a moment to sweep these into the satin bag she always carried, but it took considerably longer to restore Edmund to an upright position, and when this was done, his face was streaked with dust and his small, hot hands were black.

Edmund lolled; Edmund fidgeted; Edmund even infected Montagu so that he fidgeted too. Every five minutes or so Edmund whispered, "Can we go home now?" till at last peace descended upon poor Miss Esperance, for in the middle of the sermon Edmund fell fast asleep with his head against her shoulder.

Miss Esperance looked quite pale and exhausted as she took her place at early dinner that day, but Edmund was rosy and cheerful, and greeted Mr. Wycherly as "Dearie" with rapturous affection when that gentleman took his place at the bottom of the table. He always had dinner with the children on Sundays.

At first the small boys were so hungry that very little was said, but presently when pudding came Mr. Wycherly asked: "Well, Edmund, how did you get on at church?"

Edmund laid down his spoon: "I'm never going back," he said decidedly, "it is a 'bomnable place."

"Edmund!" exclaimed Miss Esperance, "how can you say such a thing. You, unfortunately, did not behave particularly well, though I forgive that, as it was the first time—but, remember, you will go to the church every Sunday, and you will learn to be a good boy when you're there."

"It is," Edmund repeated, unconvinced, "a 'bomnable place, a 'bomnation of desolation place."

The phrase had occurred several times in the earlier part of the minister's sermon before Edmund fell asleep, and commended itself to his youthful imagination as being singularly forceful and expressive.

Miss Esperance sighed. She really felt incapable of further wrestling with Edmund just then, and looked appealingly at Mr. Wycherly. But he dropped his eyes and refused to meet her gaze.

"He," Edmund suddenly resumed, pointing with his spoon at Mr. Wycherly, "never goes there. He"—with even more emphasis and the greatest deliberation—"is a—very—wise—man."

Here the naughty boy wagged his curly head and spoke with such barefaced and perfect mimicry of his aunt, that again catching Mr. Wycherly's eye, she burst into laughter, in which that gentleman was thankful to join her.

"More puddin', please!" Edmund exclaimed, seizing the propitious moment to hand up his plate.

That afternoon neither of the little boys accompanied Miss Esperance to church.

CHAPTER XI

LOAVES AND FISHES

I am no quaker at my food. I confess I am not indifferent to the kinds of it.—CHARLES LAMB.

On the following Sabbath day Edmund was a-missing directly it was time to get ready for church. He was to be found neither in house nor garden, and Miss Esperance came to the sorrowful conclusion that the Bethune temperament had again asserted itself, and that Edmund had, of deliberate purpose, effaced himself so that he should not be made to go to church. She was not on this occasion in the least perturbed by the fact that the small boy was lost. She had no fears as to his safety, but she was most grievously upset by this deliberate flying in the face of authority, and set off for church, looking very grave and almost stern, with only Montagu in attendance.

Mr. Wycherly had shut himself in his room during the hunt for Edmund. He had a nervous dread of scenes of any kind, and when either of the little boys was punished he suffered horribly. He fully recognised the necessity for occasional correction, especially in the case of a small boy so chock-full of original sin as Edmund. But none the less did he undergo much mental anguish on the occasions when such punishment took place. He could not altogether approve of certain of the methods of Miss Esperance, although he reverenced her far too much to indulge in any conscious criticism.

Remote had always been marked out from other houses by the immense tranquillity of its chief inmates, to whom fret and fuss were unknown. People were never scolded at Remote, unless by Elsa, when she was quite sure Miss Esperance was out of hearing.

When Montagu and Edmund were naughty they were punished by Miss Esperance, who always, and manifestly, suffered much more than the delinquents.

A favourite mode of correction in days when Miss Esperance was young was the substitution of bread and water for whatever meal happened to come nearest the time of the offence: and for the little boys poignancy was added to this dismal diet by the knowledge that their aunt tasted nothing else at her own meal during such times of abstinence for them. From such punishment, all suspicion of revenge—which, in the chastened one, so often nullifies the desired result—was entirely eliminated; and the children quite understood that they were being corrected for the good of their souls, and not because their aunt required a vent for her annoyance at their misdeeds.

Sunday dinner, however—the day on which by his own request Mr. Wycherly took his mid-day meal with Miss Esperance and the children—had hitherto been exempt from any such punitive mortification of the carnal appetites. Indeed, Mr. Wycherly had imbued it with a certain Elizabethan flavour of festivity and cheerfulness, and here, greatly to his surprise, he was warmly seconded by Elsa, who grudged no extra cooking to make the Sabbath-day dinner particularly appetising. From the time that Mr. Wycherly had asserted his right to throw his all into the common lot, things had been easier at Remote, and old Elsa did not forget his enthusiastic eagerness to further her endeavours that her mistress should have a peaceful and proper breakfast.

Therefore when it became the established custom for Mr. Wycherly to carve the joint on Sundays, she was ever ready to fall in with any small plans he might make for the benefit of the little boys.

And now Edmund had been naughty on the Sabbath, and Mr. Wycherly knew what to expect.

Bread, watered by his tears, for Edmund. Bread, seasoned only by sorrowful reflection, for Miss Esperance.

Banishment for hungry Edmund if he cried aloud, and there were ducks for dinner, large fat ducks sent by Lady Alicia. Mr. Wycherly could smell the stuffing even now. Who would believe that the smell of sage and onions could bear so mournful a message?

The Greek characters of the Philebus he held in his hand danced before his eyes. He could not give his mind to the philosophy of beauty or the theory of pleasure. The doctrine of æsthetical, moral, and intellectual harmonies, pleasing as it was to him on ordinary occasions, failed to hold him just then, when all his mental vision was concentrated on a chubby, tearful figure whose misdeeds would debar him from duck for dinner.

Mr. Wycherly laid down his "Plato" and began to pace the room restlessly, finally taking up his stand at the window looking out on the garden. Where was that boy? Where had the monkey hidden himself? He was not with Mause, for Mr. Wycherly could see the old dog lying in a patch of sunshine on the little plot of grass.

He went back to his bookshelf for comfort: he wanted something human, something warm and faulty and sympathetic, and his eye lighted on "Tristram Shandy." "Tristram Shandy" was tight in the shelf—squeezed in between the "Phædo" and Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity"—Mr. Wycherly was nervous and agitated, and he must have pulled it out clumsily, for it fell to the ground with a thump.

As he stooped to recover it he caught sight of a plump brown leg protruding from beneath his sofa. He went down on his knees to look more closely, and there, cuddled up under the sofa, his curly head pillowed on his arm, lay Edmund, fast asleep. Edmund possessed a Wellingtonian capacity for falling asleep whenever he kept still. He had hidden under the sofa in Mr. Wycherly's room just before that gentleman took refuge there from the grieved annoyance of Miss Esperance at her grand-nephew's defection. Mr. Wycherly had shut his door, and no one dreamt of disturbing him to look there for the missing one.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish!

Although Mr. Wycherly knew that Miss Esperance would exonerate him from any actual participation in Edmund's truancy, he was assuredly accessory after the fact, and what was to be done?

"I hope he won't hit his head when he wakes up," Mr. Wycherly thought concernedly. "What a beautiful child he is!" and he knelt on where he was gazing admiringly at the slumbering cupid.

Stronger and stronger grew the savour of sage and onions throughout the little house. It penetrated even to Mause in the garden, and she arose from her patch of sunshine and sniffed inquisitively.

Mr. Wycherly grew stiff with kneeling, and rose to his feet. At the same moment Edmund rolled over and hit his leg against the edge of the sofa. It woke him, and the instant Edmund awoke he was wide awake. "Dearie, are you zere?" he demanded. He could see Mr. Wycherly's legs, and no more, from where he was lying. In another minute he was sitting on Mr. Wycherly's knee while that elderly scholar cudgelled his brains for some form of remonstrance which would bring home to this very youthful delinquent the impropriety of his conduct.

"Dearie," Edmund exclaimed with disarming sweetness, "aren't you glad I'm here wiv you?" Here he rubbed his soft face against Mr. Wycherly's. "What a good smell! isn't it? I'm so hungry: is there a bikkit about?"

Mr. Wycherly steeled his heart: "You know, sonnie," he said very gravely, "that you ought not to be here at all; you ought to be with your dear aunt in church."

Edmund looked at Mr. Wycherly in reproachful surprise. "In church?" he echoed, as though such a possibility had occurred to him for the first time that morning.

"In church," Mr. Wycherly repeated. "Your dear aunt expected you to go there with her and with Montagu, and she was very sad that she had to go without you. It was not right of you to hide, sonnie. It was neither kind nor polite nor straightforward."

"You doesn't go," Edmund argued, staring gloomily at Mr. Wycherly. "Why mus' I?"

"You must go because your dear aunt wishes it," Mr. Wycherly replied, ignoring the first part of Edmund's remark.

"Would you go if see wissed it?"

"I would. But you see, for me it is different. I was brought up in a different kind of church, and I am no longer a little boy. Miss Esperance has never asked me to go to church with her."

"Why hasn't see ast you?"

"Because, as I tell you, I was brought up in a different church."

"Why can't I be brought up in your church? Then we needn't neither of us never go," Edmund suggested, smiling radiantly, as though he had solved the difficulty.

Mr. Wycherly sighed deeply. "But I did go," he exclaimed. "I always went when I was a little boy, every Sunday, and afterward at Oxford I went nearly every day as well."

Edmund's face fell. He desired to belong to no church that required daily attendance. Mr. Wycherly's looks were so serious that the little boy began to be anxious.

"What will Aunt Esp'ance do, do you sink?"

"I fear she will feel compelled to punish you."

"Bed?" Edmund inquired uneasily.

"No, I fear, I very greatly fear it will be dinner——"

Mr. Wycherly felt the little figure stiffen in his arms, as without a word Edmund laid his head down on his old friend's shoulder. The child lay quite still, and glancing down at him Mr. Wycherly saw how the red mouth drooped at the corners, and the blue eyes were screwed up tight to keep back the tears. No such dread contingency had crossed Edmund's mind till this moment, and it swept over him with devastating force. Not to share in the Sunday dinner, that cheerful meal, when Mr. Wycherly made jokes and Aunt Esperance sat beaming in her Sunday silks; when hungry little boys were never refused two, even three, helpings of everything. It was a dreadful dispensation.

Edmund gave a short, smothered sob and buried his face in Mr. Wycherly's neck.

"Perhaps," the grave voice went on, and Edmund opened one tearful eye, as though the gloom of his outlook were pierced by some ray of hope, "perhaps if you went to your aunt and told her how sorry you are, and that you promise on your honour as a gentleman you will never try to get out of going to church again—perhaps she might forgive you this once. If you can tell her this and mean it, my son, every word, I think that she may be induced to forgive you—just this once."

The green gate creaked, there was a rush of feet on the staircase as Montagu made straight for Mr. Wycherly's room.

"Here you are," he exclaimed. "I thought you'd be here somehow—what's the matter?"

Mr. Wycherly put Edmund gently from off his knee, and rose from his chair.

"Wait here with Montagu, sonnie," he said. "I will see Miss Esperance first," and he left the room, carefully shutting the door behind him.

"Is Aunt Esp'ance very sorry?" Edmund asked anxiously. He did not ask if she were angry, for that she had never been with him.

"I don't think she's as sorry as she was at first," Montagu said consolingly. "We met Mrs. Gloag as we were coming out and Aunt Esperance told how you'd hidden, and Mrs. Gloag laughed, and after that I don't think she was so sorry."

The door was opened and Mr. Wycherly came back. "Go to your aunt in her room, Edmund," he said, "and remember what I told you."

Edmund trotted off obediently.

A few minutes later Robina rang the dinner bell. Edmund and his aunt descended the curly staircase together, hand in hand.

"I told her I was sorry," he announced to Mr. Wycherly, who was waiting at the dining-room door that Miss Esperance might pass in first. "I'm going to church zis afternoon. I'm going," he added gleefully, "becos' zere's ducks for dinner."

CHAPTER XII

THE VILLAGE

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

POPE.

"Our society may be small but it is extremely select," Miss Maggie Moffat used to say on such occasions as friends from the South-side of Edinburgh used to visit her.

"It is what we have always sought after," Miss Jeanie, her sister, would chime in. "Quality not quantity, and nowhere could we have found superior quality if we had gone over the whole of the British Isles to look for it."

None of the earlier inhabitants of Burnhead ever quite fathomed how or why the Misses Moffat had come to live there. The fact remained, however, that one term day they had taken a small house in the middle of the village street: a house that had been empty for many years. Its original name was "Rowan Cottage," because there was a rowan tree in the back garden, but when the Misses Moffat took it they persuaded the landlord to change the name to "Rowan Lodge," the only lodge in the neighbourhood save that which guarded the entrance at Lady Alicia's drive gate. The name was painted on the front of the house in large, clear characters, and it looked, the Misses Moffat thought, extremely well on the pink note-paper with scalloped edges which they affected in their correspondence.

They were ladies of uncertain age; that is to say, of the kind of age to which direct reference is never made.

They were not serenely and beautifully old like Miss Esperance, nor sturdily and frankly middle-aged like Lady Alicia, and by no stretch of imagination could they be considered young like Bonnie Margaret. They were, as they themselves would have put it, "of a quite suitable age for matrimony, not giddy girls, you understand, but nice, sensible, douce young women."

Miss Jeanie was probably not more than forty-five, and Miss Maggie some six years older. They were both moderately tall, moderately stout, and of a healthy, homely aspect which did not challenge observation. Miss Jeanie, indeed, wore a curly fringe, and on muddy days a serge golf-skirt that barely reached her substantial ankles, but Miss Maggie's mouse-coloured hair was brushed back over a cushion and displayed every inch of her intellectual forehead. Miss Maggie took in "Wise Words," and had literary leanings toward everything of an improving character.

At one time they had kept a "fancy-work emporium" on the South-side, but they had not been dependent upon their sales of Berlin wool or crochet cotton, and as the emporium was by no means thronged with customers it had seemed good to them to retire from business and seek in the country that seclusion and select society which their genteel souls hungered after.

They were sincerely convinced that the emporium of the past could not in any way preclude their reception into such society.

"It could not exactly be called trade, me dear," Miss Maggie argued, "for you see our clientèle was so exceedingly select. We were never called upon to serve a man in all the years——"

"Not so very many years, Maggie," Miss Jeanie would interrupt.

"During the time our residence was above the emporium," Miss Maggie continued calmly. "That makes a very great difference. Anybody can come into an ordinary shop. A stationer's now—a man might burst into a stationer's at any minute to buy envelopes or elastic bands, or a bit rubber: but no man would dream of entering a—place where Berlin wools and fingering and sewing silks are to be had. And you know, me dear, it always seems to me that so long as no strange man has had the opportunity to accost one, one's delicacy cannot be said to have suffered in any way."

"I've heard," said Miss Jeanie, with a little sigh, "that in London one may be accosted on the public street. It must be terrible to be accosted by a strange man. I think I should faint away at his feet from sheer terror."

"Indeed," replied Miss Maggie, bridling. "I should do no such thing. I would freeze him with a glance."

So far, however, neither of these ladies had been called upon either to faint or to freeze. Mankind had passed them by in decorous silence. Neither of them had ever been accosted by anyone more alarming than a village urchin, and their delicacy and their gentility remained unimpaired. For truly they were vastly genteel.

The real and chief attractions of Burnhead had been that the rent of their modest residence was very small, that the "big house" was occupied by "a lady of title," and that there were only two other houses in the village having any claim to be the abodes of gentility, namely, the Manse and Remote.

"Surely," argued the Misses Moffat, "in such a small place the gentry will be friendly."

And so indeed it proved, for if the Misses Moffat were genteel they were also the kindest and most amiable of women, and had they but known it, they might have searched Scotland before they found a neighbourhood where such qualities would have met with so swift a recognition from the three chief ladies in the place.

There were many who pitied the minister because his wife was so delicate. There were others, mostly outsiders, who pitied Mrs. Gloag because her husband was so stern. And because, although she had done her best to take root and bring forth the fruits of the spirit in the humble vineyard where her husband worked, there was always something alien about her which most of that small community mistrusted.

For Mrs. Gloag was English.

It was even whispered that she was the daughter of an Episcopalian clergyman.

She was slender and pretty and very frail in health: and twenty-seven years of Burnhead had not yet cured her of a tendency to laugh when things amused her. And things amused Mrs. Gloag which ought to have shocked a right-minded minister's wife.

In early days her chief offence had been that she looked younger than any minister's wife ought to have looked, that she played with her little boys as though she were a child herself; and that she had been known to yawn openly and apparently unashamed during the minister's sermons.

Now that her pretty, wavy hair was grey and her health so bad that she seldom came to church more than once on a Sabbath, sometimes not at all for weeks together, folks felt that this, and what happened to their third boy, was a judgment on the minister for having married a person so Englishey and irresponsible as Mrs. Gloag.

There was no question whatever that the minister adored his wife. Whenever his eyes rested upon her, his whole face changed and softened, and it was felt to be almost indecent that a minister should openly manifest any affection whatsoever.

Three tall sons had the minister. Two of them well-doing young men, who passed examinations and won bursaries, and were as economical, hard-working and clear-headed young Scotsmen as even a minister could wish to see. A little harsh, perhaps, and dictatorial, and argumentative; a little fond of airing their opinions unasked, a little apt to judge character wholly by failure or success in practical things; a little lacking in deference to older people. Still they were fine, capable, upstanding young men of the "get up and git" order which is so admirable; and while Mr. Wycherly would go miles out of his way to avoid either of them, he was the very first to acknowledge their many excellent qualities.

But Curly, the youngest, was different. He was even more brilliant intellectually than his brothers; he was better looking, and he had much of his mother's charm. When he was eighteen he won a scholarship at Balliol, a regular blue-ribbon among scholarships, and the minister was a proud man.

Curly did well at Oxford, he lived sparely, and took tutorships in the vacations, and when he came home the Manse was a merry place. Mr. Wycherly was very fond of Curly, for he came and talked about Oxford, and he would ask the older scholar's opinion about many things, and seemed to think it quite worth having. Now his brothers considered Mr. Wycherly a failure, effete, played out, vieux-jeu, and Mr. Wycherly knew it.

Curly took a good degree, and then the blow fell. He became an actor and "went on the stage."