‘You don’t mean it!’

’Aye, I do; and she has not even told James, lest he should wish to spend more upon her.  She glories in it, but that is hardly wholesome.’

‘Then she told you?’

’Oh, yes!  We always were brothers!  It is great fun to have her here!  I always wished it, and I’m glad it has come before they have made her get out of the boy.  He will be father to the woman some day; and that will be soon enough, without teasing her.’

Mary wished to ask whether all this were for Clara’s good, but she could not very well put such a question to him; and, after all, it was noticeable that, noisy and unguarded as Clara’s chatter was, there never was anything that in itself should not have been said:  though her manner with Louis was unceremonious, it was never flirting; and refinement of mind was as evident in her rough-and-ready manner as in his high-bred quietness.  This seemed to account for Mrs. Frost’s non-interference, which at first amazed her niece; but Aunt Catharine’s element was chiefly with boys, and her love for Clara, though very great, showed itself chiefly in still regarding her as a mere child, petting her to atone for the privations of school, and while she might assent to the propriety of James’s restrictions, always laughing or looking aside when they were eluded.

James argued and remonstrated.  He said a great deal, always had the advantage in vehemence, and appeared to reduce Louis to a condition of quaint debonnaire indifference; and warfare seemed the normal state of the cousins, the one fiery and sensitive, the other cool and impassive, and yet as appropriate to each other as the pepper and the cucumber, to borrow a bon mot from their neighbour, Sydney Calcott.

If Jem came to Mary brimful of annoyance with Louis’s folly, a mild word of assent was sufficient to make him turn round and do battle with the imaginary enemy who was always depreciating Fitzjocelyn.  To make up for Clara’s avoidance of Mary, he rendered her his prime counsellor, and many an hour was spent in pacing up and down the garden in the summer twilight; while she did her best to pacify him by suggesting that thorough relaxation would give spirits and patience for Clara’s next half year, and that it might be wiser not to overstrain his own undefined authority, while the lawful power, Aunt Catharine, did not interfere.  Surely she might safely be trusted to watch over her own granddaughter; and while Clara was so perfectly simple, and Louis such as he was, more evil than good might result from inculcating reserve.  At any rate, it was hard to meddle with the poor child’s few weeks of happiness, and to this James always agreed; and then he came the next day to relieve himself by fighting the battle over again.  So constantly did this occur, that Aunt Kitty, in her love of mischief, whispered to Mrs. Ponsonby that she only hoped the two viziers would not quarrel about the three thousand sequins, three landed estates, and three slaves.