Johnnie then went his way.  It was Saturday afternoon; he told his sisters that “it was all right,” and thereupon resolving no longer to deny themselves the innocent pleasures of life, they sent little Bertram into the town for eighteenpennyworth of “rock.”

“Where’s the change?” he inquired, with the magisterial dignity belonging to his race, when his little brother came home.

Bertram replied with all humility that he had only, been tossing up the fourpenny piece a few times for fun, when it fell into the ditch.  He couldn’t help it; he was very sorry.

“Soufflez the fourpenny piece,” said Johnnie in a burst of reckless extravagance; “I forgive you this once.  Produce the stuff.”

He felt a lordly contempt for money just then; perhaps it was wrong, but prosperity was spoiling him.  He was to retain his pony, and this amiable beast was dear to him.

In the meantime Valentine, established at Melcombe, had been enjoying the sweetness of a no less real prosperity.

From that moment, when the ghost story had melted into mist, he had flung aside all those uneasy doubts which had disturbed his first weeks of possession.

He soon surrounded himself with the luxury that was so congenial to him.  All the neighbourhood called on him, and his naturally sociable temper, amiable, domestic ways, and good position enabled him, with hardly any effort, to be always among a posse of people who suited him perfectly.

There were more ladies than young men in the neighbourhood.  Valentine was intimate with half-a-dozen of the former before he had been among them three weeks.  He experienced the delights of feminine flattery, a thing almost new to him.  Who so likely to receive it?  He was eligible, he was handsome, and he was always in a good humour, for the place and the life pleased him, and all things smiled.

In a round of country gaieties, in which picnics and archery parties bore a far larger proportion than any young man would have cared for who was less devoted to the other sex, Valentine passed much of his time, laughing and making laugh wherever he went.  His jokes were bandied about from house to house, till he felt the drawback in passing for a wit.  He was expected to be always funny.

But a little real fun goes a long way in a dull neighbourhood, and he had learned just so much caution from his early escapade as to be willing to hail any view concerning himself that might be a corrective of the more true and likely one that he loved to flirt.

He was quite determined, as he thought, not to get into another scrape, and perhaps a very decided intention to make, in the end, an advantageous marriage, may have grown out of the fancy that his romance in life was over.

If he thought so, it was in no very consistent fashion, for he was always the slave (for the day) of the prettiest girl in every party he went to.