Fitzjocelyn politely apologized to Ellen for a second time stepping over her soapy deluge, and, as he opened the study door with a preliminary knock, a voice, as sharp and petulant as it was low, called out, ’Hollo!  Be quiet there, can’t you!  You’ve no business here yet, and I have no time to waste on your idleness.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said Louis, advancing into the dim light of the single bed-room candle, which only served to make visible the dusky, unshuttered windows, and the black gulf of empty grate.  James was sitting by the table, with his child wrapped in the plaid, asleep on his breast, and his disengaged hand employed in correcting exercises.  Without moving, he held it out, purple and chilled, exclaiming, ‘Ha!  Fitzjocelyn, I took you for that lout of a Garett.’

‘Is this an average specimen of your reception of your scholars?’

’I was afraid of his waking the child.  She has been unwell all day, and I have scarcely persuaded her to go to sleep.’

‘Emulating Hooker.’

‘As little in patience as in judgment,’ sighed James.

’And which of them is it who is lulled by the strains of ’As in proesenti?’’

‘Which?’ said James, somewhat affronted.  ’Can’t you tell sixteen months from five?’

’I beg her pardon; but I can’t construct a whole child from an inch of mottled leg—­as Professor Owen would a megalosaurus from a tooth.  Does she walk?’

‘Poor child, she must!’ said James.  ’She thinks it very hard to have two sisters so little younger than herself,’ and he peeped under the plaid at the little brown head, and drew it closer round, with a look of almost melancholy tenderness, guarding carefully against touching her with his cold hands.

‘She will think it all the better by-and-by,’ said Louis.

’You had better not stay here in the cold.  I’ll come when I have heard that boy’s imposition and looked over these exercises.’  And he ran his hand through his hair again.

’Don’t!  You look like enough to a lion looking out of a bush to frighten ten boys already,’ said Louis.  ‘I’ll do the exercises,’ pulling the copy-books away.

‘What, you don’t trust me?’ as James detained them.

‘No, I don’t,’ said James, his cousin’s brightness awakening his livelier manner.  ’It needs an apprenticeship to be up to their blunders.’

’Let me read them to you.  I gave notice to Isabel that I am come to dinner, and no doubt she had rather I were disposed of.’

James objected no farther, and the dry labour was illuminated by the discursive remarks and moralizings which Louis allowed to flow in their natural idle course, both to divert his dispirited cousin, and to conceal from himself how much cause there was for depression.  When the victim of the imposition approached, Louis prevented the dreaded clumsy entrance, seized on a Virgil, and himself heard the fifty lines, scarcely making them serve their purpose as a punishment, but sending the culprit away in an unusually amiable temper.