“Feel, Isobel,” said he, “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“Very, Charles, but I’m in a hurry.”

“Look here,” he continued, with an ugly expression on his face, “I’m going into training.  I’m going to eat bits of raw mutton, and dumb-bell.  Wait a year, wait half a year, and I shall be able to thrash him.  I’ll make him remember these theatricals.  I don’t forget.  I haven’t forgot his bursting my football out of spite.”

It is not pleasant to see one’s own sins reflected on other faces.  I could not speak.

By the front door was Bobby.  He was by way of looking out of the portico window, but his swollen eyes could not possibly have seen anything.

“Oh, Isobel, Isobel!” he sobbed, “Philip’s gone, and taken the D—­d—­d—­dragon with him, and we’re all m—­m—­m—­miserable.”

“Don’t cry, Bobby,” said I, kissing him.  “Finish your cloak, and be doing anything you can.  I’m going to try and bring Philip back.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Isobel!  If only he’ll come back I don’t care what I do.  Or I’ll give up my parts if he wants them, and be a scene-shifter, if you’ll lend me your carpet-slippers, and make me a paper cap.”

“GOD has given you a very sweet temper, Bobby,” said I, solemnly.  “I wish I had one like it.”

“You’re as good as gold,” said Bobby.  His loving hug added strength to my resolutions, and I ran across the garden and jumped the ha-ha, and followed Philip over the marsh.  I do not know whether he heard my steps when I came nearly up with him, but I fancy his pace slackened.  Not that he looked round.  He was much too sulky.

Philip is a very good-looking boy, much handsomer than I am, though we are alike.  But the family curse disfigures his face when he is cross more than any one’s, and the back view of him is almost worse than the front.  His shoulders get so humped up, and his whole figure is stiff with cross-grained obstinacy.

“I shall never hold out if he speaks as ungraciously as he looks,” thought I in despair.  “But I’ll not give in till I can hold out no longer.”

“Philip!” I said.  He turned round, and his face was no prettier to look at than his shoulders.

“What do you want?” (in the costermonger tone.)

“I want you to come back, Philip”—­(here I choked).

“I dare say,” he sneered, “and you want the properties!  But you’ve got your play, and your amiable Charles, and your talented Alice, and your ubiquitous Bobby.  And the audience will be entertained with an unexpected after-piece entitled—­’The disobliging disobliged.’”

Oh it was hard!  I think if I had looked at Philip’s face I must have broken down, but I kept my eyes steadily on the crimson sun, which loomed large through the marsh mists that lay upon the horizon, as I answered with justifiable vehemence: