“Well, sir—­”

“And I stopped for only one minute, Mr. Rushton,” added Verty.”

“One minute!  Do you know, sir, that life is made up of minutes?”

“Yes, sir,” said Verty.

“Well, if you know that, why do you trifle away your minutes?  Don’t reply to me, young man,” continued the shaggy bear, “I have no desire to argue with you—­I hate and despise arguing, and will not indulge you.  But remember this, Life is the struggle of a man to pay the debt he owes to Duty.  If he forgets his work, or neglects it, for paltry gratifications of the senses or the feelings, he is disgraced—­he is a coward in the ranks—­a deserter from the regiment—­he is an absconding debtor, sir, and will be proceeded against as such—­remember that, sir!  A pretty thing for you here, when you have your duty to your mother to perform, to be thus dallying and cooing with this baby—­ough!”

And the lawyer scowled at Redbud with terrible emphasis.

Redbud knew Mr. Rushton well,—­and smiled.  She was rather grateful to him for having interrupted an interview which her woman-instinct told had commenced critically; and though Redbud could not, perhaps, have told any one what she feared, still this instinct spoke powerfully to her.

It was with a smile, therefore, that Redbud held out her hand to Mr. Rushton, and said: 

“Please don’t scold Verty—­he won’t stay long, and he just stopped to ask how we all were.”

“Humph!” replied the lawyer, his scowling brow relaxing somewhat as he felt the soft, warm little hand in his own,—­“humph! that’s the way it always is.  He only stopped to say good morning to ’all;’—­I suspect his curiosity was chiefly on the subject of a single member of the family.”

And a grim smile corrugated—­so to speak—­the rugged countenance.

Redbud blushed slightly, and said: 

“Verty likes us all very much, and—­”

“Not a doubt of it!” said the lawyer, “and no doubt ‘we all’ like Verty!  Come, you foolish children, don’t be bothering me with your nonsense.  And you, Mr. Verty—­you need’nt be so foolish as to consider everything I say so harsh as you seem to.  You’ll go next and tell somebody that old Rushton is an ill-natured huncks, without conscience or proper feeling; that he grumbled with you for stopping a moment to greet your friends.  If you say any such thing,” added Mr. Rushton, scowling at the young man, “you will be guilty of as base a slander—­yes, sir! as base a slander, sir!—­as imagination could invent!”

And with a growl, the speaker turned from Verty, and said, roughly, to Redbud: 

“Where’s your father?"’

“Here I am,” said the bluff and good-humored voice of the Squire, from the door; “you are early—­much obliged to you.”  And the Squire and lawyer shook hands.  Mr. Rushton’s hand fell coldly to his side, and regarding the Squire for a moment with what seemed an expression of contemptuous anger, he said, frowning, until his shaggy, grey eye-brows met together almost: