“Where was Pettitt himself?”

“Well employed, poor little fellow, saving the people in those three cottages of his.  No one supposed his shop in danger, but the fire took a sudden freak and came down Long Street; and though the house is standing, it had to be emptied and deluged with water to save it.  I never knew Pettitt had a mother till I found her mounting guard, like one distracted, over her son’s bottles of perfumery.”

“And dyes?” murmured Raymond under his breath; but Frank caught the sound, and said, “Ah, Julius! don’t I remember his inveigling you into coming out with scarlet hair?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen him since,” said Julius, laughing.  “I believe he couldn’t resist such an opportunity of practising his art.  And for my part, I must say for myself, that it was in our first holidays, and Raymond and Miles had been black and blue the whole half-year from having fought my battles whenever I was called either ‘Bunny’ or ‘Grandfather.’  So when he assured me he could turn my hair to as sweet a raven-black as Master Poynsett’s, I thought it would be pleasing to all, forgetting that he could not dye my eyes, and that their effect would have been some degrees more comical.”

“For shame, Julius!” said Rosamond.  “Don’t you know that one afternoon, when Nora had cried for forty minutes over her sum, she declared that she wanted to make her eyes as beautiful as Mr. Charnock’s.  Well, what was the effect?”

“Startling,” said Raymond.  “He came down in shades of every kind of crimson and scarlet.  A fearful object, with his pink-and-white face glowing under it.”

“And what I had to undergo from Susan!” added Julius.  “She washed me, and soaped me, and rubbed me, till I felt as if all the threshing-machines in the county were about my head, lecturing me all the time on the profanity of flying against Scripture by trying to alter one’s hair from what Providence had made it.  Nothing would do; her soap only turned it into shades of lemon and primrose.  I was fain to let her shave my head as if I had a brain fever; and I was so horribly ashamed for years after, that I don’t think I have set foot in Long Street since till to-day.”

“Pettitt is a queer little fellow,” said Herbert.  “The most truculent little Radical to hear him talk, and yet staunch in his votes, for he can’t go against those whose hair he has cut off from time immemorial.”

“I hope he has not lost much,” said Julius.

“His tenements are down, but they were insured; and as to his stock, he says he owes its safety entirely to you, Julius.  I think he would present you with both his models as a testimonial, if you could only take them,” said Raymond.

Cecil had neither spoken nor laughed through all this.  She was nursing her wrath; and after marching out of the dining-room, lay in wait to intercept her husband, and when she had claimed his attention, began, “Rosamond ought not to be allowed to say such things.”