disgraced himself.  “I’ll tell you what, Julius Charnock, if you wish him to forget all the little impression it may have made, and be ready to run after any amount of folly, you’d make me have him home to be petted and cried over by his mother and sisters.  He has been their spoilt pet too long, and I won’t have him spoilt now.  I’ll not see him till he has worked enough to show whether there’s any real stuff in him.”

Mr. Bowater never even asked where his son was, probably taking it for granted that he was gone back to Compton; nor did Julius see Jenny again, as she was trying to comfort her mother under the dreadful certainty that poor dear Herbert was most cruelly treated, and that the examining chaplain came of a bad stock, and always had had a dislike to the family.  It was to be hoped that Mr. Bowater would keep to his wise resolution, and not send for Herbert, for nothing could be worse for him than the sympathy he would have met with from her.

What with looking in to report at Rood House and finding Herbert most grateful for leave to remain there for a few days, Julius did not reach home till long after dark.  Pleasantly did the light greet him from the open doorway where his Rosamond was standing.  She sprang at once into his arms, as if he had been absent a month, and cried, “Here you are, safe at last!” Then, as she pulled off his wraps, “How tired you must be!  Have you had any food?  No—­it’s all ready;” and he could see ‘high tea’ spread, and lighted by the first fire of the season.  “Come and begin!”

“What, without washing my hands?”

“You are to do that in the study; it is all ready.”  He did not exactly see why he should be too tired to mount to his dressing-room; but he obeyed, not ungratefully, and his chair was ready, his plate heaped with partridge and his tumbler filled with ale almost before his eyes had recovered the glare of light.  The eagerness and flutter of Rosamond’s manner began to make him anxious, and he began for the third time the inquiries she had always cut short—­“Baby all right?  Terry better?”

“Baby—­oh yes, a greater duck than ever.  I put her to bed myself, and she was quite delicious.  Eat, I say; go on.”

“Not unless you eat that other wing.”

“I’ll help myself then.  You go on.  I don’t see Herbert, so I suppose it is all right.  Where’s your canonry?”

“Alas! poor Herbert is plucked.  I had to go round by Strawyers to tell them.”

“Plucked!  I never heard of such a thing.  I think it is a great shame such a nice honest fellow should be so ill-used, and when all his pretty things have been stolen too!  Do you know, they’ve taken up young Hornblower; but his friends have made off with the things, and they say they are in the melting-pot by this time, and there’s no chance of recovering them.”

“I don’t think he cares much now, poor fellow.  Did you see Mrs. Hornblower?”