This was a cut, of course, at me.  Mr. Faggus had won the goodwill of Lizzie by his hatred of the Doones, and vows that if he could get a dozen men of any courage to join him, he would pull their stronghold about their ears without any more ado.  This malice of his seemed strange to me, as he had never suffered at their hands, so far at least as I knew; was it to be attributed to his jealousy of outlaws who excelled him in his business?  Not being good at repartee, I made no answer to Lizzie, having found this course more irksome to her than the very best invective:  and so we entered the house together; and mother sent at once for me, while I was trying to console my darling sister Annie.

“Oh, John! speak one good word for me,” she cried with both hands laid in mine, and her tearful eyes looking up at me.

“Not one, my pet, but a hundred,” I answered, kindly embracing her:  “have no fear, little sister:  I am going to make your case so bright, by comparison, I mean, that mother will send for you in five minutes, and call you her best, her most dutiful child, and praise Cousin Tom to the skies, and send a man on horseback after him; and then you will have a harder task to intercede for me, my dear.”

“Oh, John, dear John, you won’t tell her about Lorna—­oh, not to-day, dear.”

“Yes, to-day, and at once, Annie.  I want to have it over, and be done with it.”

“Oh, but think of her, dear.  I am sure she could not bear it, after this great shock already.”

“She will bear it all the better,” said I; “the one will drive the other out.  I know exactly what mother is.  She will be desperately savage first with you, and then with me, and then for a very little while with both of us together; and then she will put one against the other (in her mind I mean) and consider which was most to blame; and in doing that she will be compelled to find the best in either’s case, that it may beat the other; and so as the pleas come before her mind, they will gain upon the charges, both of us being her children, you know:  and before very long (particularly if we both keep out of the way) she will begin to think that after all she has been a little too hasty, and then she will remember how good we have always been to her; and how like our father.  Upon that, she will think of her own love-time, and sigh a good bit, and cry a little, and then smile, and send for both of us, and beg our pardon, and call us her two darlings.”

“Now, John, how on earth can you know all that?” exclaimed my sister, wiping her eyes, and gazing at me with a soft bright smile.  “Who on earth can have told you, John?  People to call you stupid indeed!  Why, I feel that all you say is quite true, because you describe so exactly what I should do myself; I mean—­I mean if I had two children, who had behaved as we have done.  But tell me, darling John, how you learned all this.”

“Never you mind,” I replied, with a nod of some conceit, I fear:  “I must be a fool if I did not know what mother is by this time.”