accountable.  Then, indeed, Mrs. Blake felt that her cup of bitterness was full to overflowing, though Lottie did assure her, “You should have seen Jack’s eye last April:  his was much more swollen, and all sorts of colors, than mine.”  It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that Jack must have been, to say the least of it, unpleasant to look at.  Percival happened to come to the house just then, and was tranquilly amused at the good lady’s despair.  It was before the Blakes knew much of Horace, and she had not yet discovered that Percival’s cousin was so much more friendly than Percival himself; so she made the latter her confidant.  He recommended a raw beefsteak with a gravity worthy of a Spanish grandee.  He was not allowed to see Lottie, who was kept in seclusion as being half culprit, half invalid, and wholly unpresentable; but as he was going away the servant gave him a little note in Lottie’s boyish scrawl: 

“DEAR PERCIVAL:  Mamma was cross with Robin and sent him away do tell him I’m all right, and he is not to mind he will be sure to be about somewhere It is very stupid being shut up here Addie says she can’t go running about giving messages to boys and Papa said if he saw him he should certainly punch his head so please tell him he is not to bother himself about me I shall soon be all right.”

Percival went away, smiling a little at his letter and at Lottie herself.  Just as he reached the first of the fields which were the short cut from the house, he spied Robin lurking on the other side of the hedge, with Jack at his heels.  He halted, and called “Robin!  Robin Wingfield!  I want to speak to you.”

The boy hesitated:  “There’s a gate farther on.”

Coming to the gate, Percival rested his arms on it and looked at Robin.  The boy was not big for his age, but there was a good deal of cleverness in his upturned freckled face.  “I’ve a message for you,” said the young man.

“From her?” Robin indicated the Blakes’ house with a jerk of his head.

“Yes.  She asked me to tell you that she is all right, though, of course, she can’t come out at present.  She made sure I should find you somewhere about.”

Robin nodded:  “I did try to hear how she was, but that old dragon—­”

“Meaning my friend Mrs. Blake?” said young Thorne.  “Ah!  Hardly civil perhaps, but forcible.”

“Well—­Mrs. Blake, then—­caught me in the shrubbery and pitched into me.  Said I ought to be ashamed of myself.  Supposed I should be satisfied when I’d broken Lottie’s neck.  Told me I’d better not show my face there again.”

“Well,” said Percival, “you couldn’t expect Mrs. Blake to be particularly delighted with your afternoon’s work.  And, Wingfield, though I was especially to tell you that you were not to vex yourself about it, you really ought to be more careful.  Knocking a young lady’s eye half out—­”

“Young lady!” in a tone of intense scorn.  “Lottie isn’t a young lady.”