’Roaring?  No; Tryan’s as soft as a sucking dove—­one of your honey-mouthed hypocrites.  Plenty of devil and malice in him, though, I could see that, while he was talking to the Bishop; but as smooth as a snake outside.  He’s beginning a single-handed fight with me, I can see—­persuading my clients away from me.  We shall see who will be the first to cry peccavi.  Milby will do better without Mr. Tryan than without Robert Dempster, I fancy! and Milby shall never be flooded with cant as long as I can raise a breakwater against it.  But now, get the breakfast things cleared away, and let us set about the play-bill.  Come, mamsey, come and have a walk with me round the garden, and let us see how the cucumbers are getting on.  I’ve never taken you round the garden for an age.  Come, you don’t want a bonnet.  It’s like walking in a greenhouse this morning.’

‘But she will want a parasol,’ said Janet.  ’There’s one on the stand against the garden-door, Robert.’

The little old lady took her son’s arm with placid pleasure.  She could barely reach it so as to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards her, and accommodated his heavy long-limbed steps to her feeble pace.  The cat chose to sun herself too, and walked close beside them, with tail erect, rubbing her sleek sides against their legs,—­too well fed to be excited by the twittering birds.  The garden was of the grassy, shady kind, often seen attached to old houses in provincial towns; the apple-trees had had time to spread their branches very wide, the shrubs and hardy perennial plants had grown into a luxuriance that required constant trimming to prevent them from intruding on the space for walking.  But the farther end, which united with green fields, was open and sunny.

It was rather sad, and yet pretty, to see that little group passing out of the shadow into the sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shadow again:  sad, because this tenderness of the son for the mother was hardly more than a nucleus of healthy life in an organ hardening by disease, because the man who was linked in this way with an innocent past, had become callous in worldliness, fevered by sensuality, enslaved by chance impulses; pretty, because it showed how hard it is to kill the deep-down fibrous roots of human love and goodness—­how the man from whom we make it our pride to shrink, has yet a close brotherhood with us through some of our most sacred feelings.

As they were returning to the house, Janet met them, and said, ’Now, Robert, the writing things are ready.  I shall be clerk, and Mat Paine can copy it out after.’

Mammy once more deposited in her arm-chair, with her knitting in her hand, and the cat purring at her elbow, Janet seated herself at the table, while Mr. Dempster placed himself near her, took out his snuff-box, and plentifully suffusing himself with the inspiring powder, began to dictate.

What he dictated, we shall see by-and-by.