“No,” he said, “that would not do.  The Bowaters are our oldest friends.  But, Rosie, as you are a clergyman’s wife, could you not give up round dances?”

“Oh no, no!  That’s too bad.  I’d rather never go to a dance at all, than sit still, or be elbowed about in the square dances.  You never told me you expected that!”—­and her tones were of a child petulant at injustice.

“Suppose,” he said, as a delightful solution, “you only gratified Frank and Charlie by waltzing with them.”

She burst into a ringing laugh.  “My brothers-in-law!  How very ridiculous!  Suppose you included the curates?”

“You know what I mean,” he said gravely.

“Oh, bother the parson’s wife!  Haven’t I seen them figuring away by scores?  Did we ever have a regimental ball that they were not the keenest after?”

“So they get themselves talked of!” said Julius, as Anne’s quiet entrance broke up the dialogue.

Mrs. Poynsett had listened, glad there was no appeal to her, conscious that she did not understand the merits of the case, and while she doubted whether her eldest son had love enough, somewhat afraid lest his brother had not rather too much for the good of his lawful supremacy.

CHAPTER VII Unfruitful Suggestions

“Raymond!  Can you spare me a moment before you go into your mother’s room?”

It was Rosamond who, to his surprise, as he was about to go down-stairs, met him and drew him into her apartment—­his mother’s own dressing-room, which he had not entered since the accident.

“Is anything the matter?” he said, thinking that Julius might have spared him from complaints of Cecil.

“Oh no! only one never can speak to you, and Julius told me that you could tell me about Mrs. Poynsett.  I can’t help thinking she could be moved more than she is.”  Then, as he was beginning to speak, “Do you know that, the morning of the fire, I carried her with only one of the maids to the couch under the tent-room window?  Susan was frightened out of her wits, but she was not a bit the worse for it.”

“Ah! that was excitement.”

“But if it did not hurt her then, why should it hurt her again?  There’s old General M’Kinnon, my father’s old friend, who runs about everywhere in a wheeled-chair with a leg-rest; and I can’t think why she should not do the same.”

Raymond smiled kindly on her, but rather sadly; perhaps he was recollecting his morning’s talk about the occupancy of the drawing-room.  “You know it is her spine,” he said.

“So it is with him.  His horse rolled over him at Sebastopol, and he has never walked since.  I wanted to write to Mary M’Kinnon; but Julius said I had better talk to you, because he was only at home for a fortnight, when she was at the worst, and you knew more about it.”