“Oh, Jock, dear Jock!” she cried, “you little know the strength and life it gives me to have you taking it so like a young hero.”

“I tell you I’m sick of drill and parade,” said Jock, “and heartily glad of an excuse to turn to something where one can stretch one’s wits without being thought a disgrace to humanity.  Now, don’t you think we might be very jolly together?”

“Oh, to think of being there again!  And we can have the dear old furniture and make it like home.  It is the first definite notion any one has had.  My dear, you have given me something to look forward to.  You can’t guess what good you have done me!  It is just as if you had shown me light at the end of the thicket; ay, and made yourself the good stout staff to lead me through!”

“Mother, that’s the best thing that ever was said to me yet; worth ever so much more than all old Barnes’s money-bags.”

“If the others will approve!  But any way it is a nest egg for my own selfish pleasure to carry me through.  Why, Jock, to have your name on the old door would be bringing back the golden age!”

Nobody but Jock knew what made this such a cheerful Sunday with his mother.  She was even heard making fun, and declaring that no one knew what a relief it would be not to have to take drives when all the roads were beset with traction engines.  She had so far helped Armine out of the difficulties his lavish assurances had brought him into, that she had written a note to the Vicar, Mr. Parsons, telling him that she should be better able to reply in a little while; but Armine, knowing that he must not speak, and afraid of betraying the cause of his unhappiness and of the delay, was afraid to stir out of reach of the others lest Miss Parsons should begin an inquiry.

The Vicar of Woodside was, in fact, as some people mischievously called her, the Reverend Petronella Parsons.  Whether she wrote her brother’s sermons was a disputed question.  She certainly did other things in his name which she had better have let alone.  He was three or four years her junior, and had always so entirely followed her lead, that he seemed to have no personal identity; but to be only her male complement.  That Armine should have set up a lady of this calibre for the first goddess of his fancy was one of the comical chances of life, but she was a fine, handsome, fresh-looking woman of five-and-thirty, with a strong vein of sentiment-—ecclesiastical and poetic-—just ignorant enough to gush freely, and too genuine to be always offensive.  She had been infinitely struck with Armine, had hung a perfect romance of renovation on him, sympathised with his every word, and lavished on him what perhaps was not quite flattery, because she was entirely in earnest, but which was therefore all the worse for him.

Barbara had a natural repulsion from her, and could not understand Armine’s being attracted, and for the first time in their lives this was creating a little difference between the brother and sister.  Babie had said, in rather an uncalled-for way, that Miss Parsons would draw back when she knew the truth, and Armine had been deeply offended at such an ungenerous hint, and had reduced her to a tearful declaration that she was very sorry she had said anything so uncalled for.