“Yes, Kencroft monopolises all the good looks of the family.  What a fine fellow the dear old Friar has grown.”

“If you bring out those two girls this year, you will take the shine out of all the other chaperons!”

“I wonder whether your aunt would like it.”

“She never made any objection to Jessie’s going out with you.”

“No.  I should like it very much; I wonder I had not thought of it before, but I had hardly realised that Essie and Ellie were older than Babie, but I remember now, they are eighteen and seventeen.”

“It would be so good for you to have something human and capable of a little consideration to go out with,” added Bobus, “not to be tied to the tail of a will-of-the-wisp like that Elf-—I should not like that for you.”

“I am not much afraid,” said Caroline.  “You know I don’t stand in such awe of the little donna, and I shall have my Guardsman to take care of me when we are too frivolous for you.  But it would be very nice to have those two girls, and make it pleasanter for my Infanta, who will miss Sydney a good deal.”

“I thought the Evelyns were to be in town.”

“Yes, but their house is at the other end of the park.  What are Jock and the Infanta looking at?”

Jock and Babie, who were on a good way in advance in very happy and eager conversation, had come to a sudden stop, and now turned round, exclaiming “Look, mother!  Here’s the original Robin Goodfellow.”

And on the walk there was a most ludicrous shadow in the moonlight, a grotesque, dancing figure, with one long ear, and a hand held up in warning.  It was of course the shadow of the Midas statue, which the boys had never permitted to be restored to its pristine state.  One ear had however crumbled away, but in the shadow this gave the figure the air of cocking the other, in the most indescribably comical manner, and the whole four stood gazing and laughing at it.  There was a certain threatening attitude about its hand, which, Jock said, looked as if the ghost of old Barnes had come to threaten them for the wasteful expenditure of his hoards.  Or, as Babie said, it was more like the ghastly notion of Bertram Risingham in Rokeby, of some phantom of a murdered slave protecting those hoards.

“I don’t wonder he threatens,” said Caroline.  “I always thought he meant that audacious trick to have forfeited the hoards.”

“Very lucky he was balked,” said Bobus, “not only for us, but for human nature in general.  Fancy how insufferable that Elf would have been if she had been dancing on gold and silver.”

“Take care!” muttered Jock, under his breath.  “There’s her swain coming; I see his cigar.”

“And we really shall have it Sunday morning presently,” said his mother, “and I shall get into as great a scrape as I did in the old days of the Folly.”