“I only wish the rest of you were doing the same,” he said, “but each one seems to think himself the first person to be thought of, and her the last.”

“The Colonel’s wish seemed in course of fulfilment, for when Lucas went a few days later to his brother Robert’s rooms, he found him collecting testimonials for his fitness to act as Vice-principal to a European college at Yokohama for the higher education of the Japanese.

“Mother has not heard of it,” said Jock.

“She need not till it is settled,” answered Bobus.  “It will save her trouble with her clerical friends if she only knows too late for a protest.”

Jock understood when he saw the stipulations against religious teaching, and recognised in the Principal’s name an essayist whose negations of faith had made some stir.  However, he only said, “It will be rather a blow.”

“There are limits to all things,” replied Bobus.  “The truest kindness to her is to get afloat away from the family raft as speedily as possible.  She has quite enough to drag her down.”

“I should hope to act the other way,” said Jock.

“Get your own head above water first,” said Bobus.  “Here’s some good advice gratis, though I’ve no expectation of your taking it.  Don’t go in for study in the old quarters!  Go to Edinburgh or Paris or anywhere you please, but cut the connection, or you’ll never be rid of loafers for life.  Wherever mother is, all the rest will gravitate.  Mark me, Allen is spoilt for anything but a walking gentleman, Armine will never be good for work, and how many years do you give Janet’s Athenian to come to grief in?  Then will they return to the domestic hearth with a band of small Grecians, while Dr. Lucas Brownlow is reduced to a rotifer or wheel animal, circulating in a trap collecting supplies, with ‘sic vos non vobis’ for his motto.”

Jock looked startled.  How if there be no such rotifer?” he said.  “You don’t really think there will be nothing to depend when we are both gone?”

“When?”

“Yes, I’ve a chance of getting on Cameron’s staff in India.”

“Oh, that’s all right, old fellow!  Why, you’ll be my next neighbour.”

“But about mother?  You don’t seriously think Ali and Armie will be nothing but dead weights on her?”

“Only as long as there’s anybody to hold them up”, said Bobus, perceiving that his picture had taken an effect the reverse of what he intended.  “They have no lack of brains, and are quite able to shift for themselves and mother too, if only they have to do it, even if she were a pauper, which she isn’t.”

But it was with a less lightsome heart that Jock went to his quarters to prepare for a fancy ball, where he expected to meet Elvira, though whether he should approach her or not would depend on her own caprice.

It was a very splendid affair.  A whole back garden, had been transformed into a vast pavilion, containing an Armida’s garden, whose masses of ferns and piles of gorgeous flowers made delightful nooks for strangers who left the glare of the dancing-room, and the quaint dresses harmonised with the magic of the gaslight and the strange forms of the exotics.