She locked the bureau in a hurry, and opened the door, calling back to the boys, and then she found that Aunt Ellen had taken all the three out walking, when Jock and Armine, with the remains of their money burning in their pockets, had insisted on buying two little ships, which must necessarily be launched in the Serpentine.  Their aunt could by no means endure this, and Janet did not approve, so there seemed to have been a battle royal, in which Jock would have been the victor, if his little brother had not been led off captive between his aunt and sister, when Jock went along on the opposite side of the road, asserting his independence by every sort of monkey trick most trying to his aunt’s rural sense of London propriety.

It was very ridiculous to see the tall, grave, stately Mrs. Robert Brownlow standing there describing the intolerable naughtiness of that imp, who, not a bit abashed, sat astride on the balustrade in the comfortable conviction that he was not hers.

“I hope, at least,” concluded the lady, “that you will make them feel how bad their behaviour has been.”

“Jock,” said Carey mechanically, “I am afraid you have behaved very ill to your aunt.”

“Why, Mother Carey,” said that little wretch, “it is just that she doesn’t know anything about anything in London.”

“Yes,” chimed in little Armine, who was hanging to his mother’s skirts; “she thought she should get to the Park by Duke Street.”

“That did not make it right for you not to be obedient,” said Carey, trying for severity.

“But we couldn’t, mother.”

“Couldn’t?” both echoed.

“No,” said Jock, “or we should be still in Piccadilly.  Mother Carey, she told us not to cross till it was safe.”

“And she stood up like the Duke of Bedford in the Square,” added Armine.

Janet caught her mother’s eye, and both felt a spasm of uncontrollable diversion in their throats, making Janet turn her back, and Carey gasp and turn on the boys.

“All that is no reason at all.  Go up to the nursery.  I wish I could trust you to behave like a gentleman, when your aunt is so kind as to take you out.”

“I did, mother!  I did hand her across the street, and dragged her out from under all the omnibus horses,” said Jock in an injured tone, while Janet could not refrain from a whispered comparison, “Like a little steam-tug,” and this was quite too much for all of them, producing an explosion which made the tall and stately dame look from one to another in such bewildered amazement, that struck the mother and daughter as so comical that the one hid her face in her hands with a sort of hysterical heaving, and the other burst into that painful laughter by which strained spirits assert themselves in the young.

Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in utter astonishment and discomfiture, turned and walked off to her own room.  Somehow Carey and Janet felt more on their ordinary terms than they had done all these sad days, in their consternation and a certain sense of guilt.