“If it is at hand, I had better cast my eye over it, to judge whether it be worth while to copy it.  I shall set forth on my holiday journey the day after to-morrow, and I should like to have my mind at rest about my Christmas number.”

So she carried off with her the Algerine number of the “Joy,” and in a couple of days returned it with a hasty note—-

“A capital little story, just young and sentimental enough to make it taking, and not overdone.  Please let me have it, with a few verbal corrections, ready for the press when I come home at the end of September.  It will bring you in about £15.”

Allen was modestly elated, and only wished he had gone to one of the periodicals more widely circulated.  It was plain that literature was his vocation, and he was going to write a novel to be published in a serial, the instalments paying his expenses for the trial.  The only doubt was what it should be about, whether a sporting tale of modern life, or a historical story in which his familiarity with Italian art and scenery would be available.  Jock advised the former, Armine inclined to the latter, for each had tried his hand in his own particular line in the “Traveller’s Joy,” and wanted to see his germ developed.

To write in the heat and glare of London was, however, manifestly impossible in Allen’s eyes, and he must recruit himself by a yachting expedition to which an old acquaintance had invited him half compassionately.  Jock shrugged his shoulders on hearing of it, and observed that a tuft always expected to be paid in service, if in no other way, and he doubted Allen’s liking it, but that was his affair.  Jock himself with his usual facility of making friends, had picked up a big north-country student, twice as large as himself, with whom he meant to walk through the scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as far as the modest sum they allowed themselves would permit, after which he was to make a brief stay in his friend’s paternal Cumberland farm.  He had succeeded in gaining a scholarship at the Medical School of his father’s former hospital, and this, with the remains of the price of his commission, still made him the rich man of the family.  John was of course going home, and Mrs. Brownlow and the two younger ones had a warm invitation from their friends at Fordham.

“I should like Armie to go,” said the mother in conference with Babie, her cabinet councillor.

“O yes, Armie must go,” said Babie, “but—-”

“Then it will not disappoint you to stay at home, my dear?”

“I had much rather not go, if Sydney will not mind very much.”

“Well, Babie, I had resolved to stay here this summer, and I thought you would not wish to go without me.”

“O no, no, NO, NO, mother,” and her face and neck burnt with blushes.

“Then my Infanta and I will be thoroughly cosy together, and get some surprises ready for the others.”

“Hurrah!  We’ll do the painting of the doors.  What fun it will be to see London empty.”