Crayshaw came by the express train in the afternoon, and was met by the young Mortimers in the close carriage.  He was nearly fifteen, and a strange contrast to Johnny, whose perfect health, ardent joyousness, and lumbering proportions never were so observable as beside the clear-cut face of the other, the slow gait, an expression of countenance at once audacious, keen, and sweet, together with that peculiar shadow under the eyelids which some people consider to betoken an early death.

Crayshaw was happily quite well that afternoon, and accordingly very noisy doings went on; Miss Crampton was away for her short Easter holiday, and Aunt Christie did not interfere if she could help it when Johnny was at home.

That night Master Augustus John Mortimer, his friend, and all the family were early asleep; not so the next.  It was some time past one o’clock A.M. when John Mortimer and Brandon, who had been dining together at a neighbour’s house, one having left his father rather better, and the other having come home from the Isle of Wight, walked up towards the house deep in conversation, till John, lifting up his eyes, saw lights in the schoolroom windows.  This deluded father calmly remarked that the children had forgotten to put the lamp out when they went to bed.  Brandon thought he heard a sound uncommonly like infant revelry, but he said nothing, and the two proceeded into the closed house, and went softly up-stairs.

“Roast pork,” said Brandon, “if ever I smelt that article in my life!”

They opened the schoolroom door, and John beheld, to his extreme surprise, a table spread, his eldest son at the head of it, his twin daughters, those paragons of good behaviour, peeling potatoes, and the other children, all more or less dishevelled, sitting round, blushing and discomfited.

“My dears!” exclaimed John Mortimer, “this I never could have believed of you!  One o’clock in the morning!”

Perfect silence.  Brandon thought John would find it beneath his dignity to make a joke of this breach of discipline.  He was rather vexed that he should have helped to discover it, and feeling a little de trop, he advanced to the top of the table.  “John,” he said with a resigned air and with a melancholy cadence in his voice that greatly impressed the children.

“Come,” thought John as he paused, “they deserve a ‘wigging,’ but I don’t want to make a ‘Star-chamber matter’ of this.  I wish he would not be so supernaturally serious.”

“John,” repeated Brandon, “on occasion of this unexpected hospitality, I feel called upon to make a speech.”

John sat down, wondering what would come next.