“Well, mother,” said Armine, smiling back to her in spite of himself, “I have not liked to say so, it seemed a shame; but staying at the Vicarage made me wonder at my being such an egregious ass last year!  Do you know, I couldn’t help it; but that good lady would seem to me quite mawkish in her flattery!  And how she does domineer over that poor brother of hers!  Then the fuss she makes about details, never seeming to know which are accessories and which are principles.  I don’t wonder that I was an absurdity in the eyes of all beholders.  But it is very sad if it has really alienated my dear Infanta from all deeper and higher things!”

“Not so bad as that, my dear; my Babie is a good little girl.”

“Oh yes, mother, I did not mean-—”

“But it did break that unity between you, and prevent your leading her insensibly.  I fancy your two characters would have grown apart anyhow, but this was the moving cause.  Now I fancy, so far as I can see, that she is more afraid of being wearied and restrained than of anything else.  It is just what I felt for many years of my life.”

“No, mother?”

“Yes, my boy; till the time of your illness, serious thought, religion and all the rest, seemed to me a tedious tax; and though I always, I believe, made it a rule to my conscience in practical matters, it has only very, very lately been anything like the real joy I believe it has always been to you.  Believe that, and be patient with your little sister, for indeed she is an unselfish, true, faithful little being, and some day she will go deeper.”

Armine looked up to his mother, and his eyes were full of tears, as she kissed him, and said—-

“You will do her much more good if you sympathise with her in her innocent pleasures than if you insist on dragging her into what she feels like privations.”

“Very well, mother,” he said.  “It is due to her.”

And so, though the choir did have at least half Armine’s share of the price of “Marco’s Felucca,” he threw himself most heartily into the Christmas party, was the poet of the versified charade, acted the strong-minded woman who was the chief character in “Blue Bell;” and he and Jock gained universal applause.

Allen hardly appeared at the party.  He had a fresh attack of sleepless headache and palpitation, brought on by the departure of Miss Menella for the Continent, and perhaps by the failure of “A Single Eye” with some of the magazines.  He dabbled a little with his mother’s clay, and produced a nymph, who, as he persuaded her and himself, was a much nobler performance than Andromache, but unfortunately she did not prove equally marketable.  And he said it was quite plain that he could not succeed in anything imaginative till his health and spirits had recovered from the blow; but he was ready to do anything.