‘Is she going back alone?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Maura cheerfully; ’it is not really dark out of doors yet.’

‘I suppose it could not be helped,’ said Miss Adeline.

’No; Theodore is at the school.  They keep him late to get things ready for the inspection, and Petros had to go to the doctor’s to fetch something; but he will meet me if he is not kept waiting.’

‘It is not fit for a child like that to go alone so late,’ said Mr. White, who perhaps had imbibed Italian notions of the respectability of an escort.  ‘I will walk down with her.’

Maura looked as if darkness were highly preferable to such a cavalier; but Miss Adeline was charmed to see them walk off together, and when her sister presently came in with Gillian and Fergus, she could not but plume herself a little on her achievement.

‘Then it was those two!’ exclaimed Jane.  ’I thought so from the other side of the street, but it was too dark to be certain; and besides, there was no believing it.’

‘Did not they acknowledge you?’

‘Oh no; they were much too busy.’

‘Talking.  Oh, what fun!’ Adeline could not help observing in such glee that she looked more like ‘our youngest girl’ than the handsome middle-aged aunt.

‘But,’ suggested Fergus, somewhat astonished, ’Stebbing says he is no end of a horrid brute of a screw.’

‘Indeed.  What has he been doing?’

‘He only tipped him a coach wheel.’

’Well, to tip over as a coach wheel is the last thing I should have expected of Mr. White,’ said Aunt Jane, misunderstanding on purpose.

‘A crown piece then,’ growled Fergus; ’and of course he thought it would be a sovereign, and so he can’t pay me my two ten—­shillings, I mean, that I lent him, and so I can’t get the lovely ammonite I saw at Nott’s.’

‘How could you be so silly as to lend him any money?’

’I didn’t want to; but he said he would treat us all round if I wouldn’t be mean, and after all I only got half a goody, with all the liqueur out of it.’

‘It served you right,’ said Gillian.  ’I doubt whether you would see the two shillings again, even if he had the sovereign.’

‘He faithfully promised I should,’ said Fergus, whose allegiance was only half broken.  ’And old White is a beast, and no mistake.  He was perfectly savage to Stebbing’s major, and he said he wouldn’t be under him, at no price.’

‘Perhaps Mr. White might say the same,’ put in Aunt Ada.

‘He is a downright old screw and a bear, I tell you,’ persisted Fergus.  ’He jawed Frank Stebbing like a pickpocket for just having a cigar in the quarry.’

‘Close to the blasting powder, eh?’ said Miss Mohun.

’And he is boring and worrying them all out of their lives over the books,’ added Fergus.  ’Poking his nose into everything, so that Stebbing says his governor vows he can’t stand it, and shall cut the concern it the old brute does not take himself off to Italy before long.’