Any Royal Wardour ought to have been welcome to the Merrifields, but this individual had not been a particular favourite with the young people.  They knew he was the son of a popular dentist, who had made his fortune, and had put his son into the army to make a gentleman of him, and prevent him from becoming an artist.  In the first object there had been very fair success; but the taste for art was unquenchable, and it had been the fashion of the elder half of the Merrifield family to make a joke, and profess to be extremely bored, when ‘Fangs,’ as they naughtily called him among themselves, used to arrive from leave, armed with catalogues, or come in with his drawings to find sympathy in his colonel’s wife.  Gillian had caught enough from her four elders to share in an unreasoning way their prejudice, and she felt doubly savage and contemptuous when she heard—–­

‘Yes, I retired.’

‘And what are you doing now?’

‘My mother required me as long as she lived’ (then Gillian noticed that he was in mourning).  ’I think I shall go abroad, and take lessons at Florence or Rome, though it is too late to do anything seriously—–­and there are affairs to be settled first.’

Then came a whole shoal of other inquiries, and even though they actually included ‘poor White’ and his family, Gillian was angered and dismayed at the wretch being actually asked by her father to come in with them and see Lady Merrifield, who would be delighted to see him.

‘What would Lady Rotherwood think of the liberty?’ the displeased mood whispered to Gillian.

But Lady Rotherwood, presiding over her pretty Worcester tea-set, was quite ready to welcome any of the Merrifield friends.  There were various people in the room besides Lady Merrifield and Mysie, who had just come in.  There was the Admiral talking politics with Lord Rotherwood, and there was Clement Underwood, who had come with Harry from the city, and Bessie discussing with them boys’ guilds and their amusements.

Gillian felt frantic.  Would no one cast a thought on Alexis in prison?  If he had been to be hanged the next day, her secret annoyance at their indifference to his fate could not have been worse.

And yet at the first opportunity Harry brought Mr. Underwood to talk to her about his choir-boys, and to listen to her account of the 7th Standard boy, a member of the most musical choir in Rockquay, and the highest of the high.

‘I hope not cockiest of the cocky,’ said Mr. Underwood, smiling.  ‘Our experience is that superlatives may often be so translated.’

‘I don’t think poor Theodore is cocky,’ said Gillian; ’the Whites have always been so bullied and sat upon.’

‘Is his name Theodore?’ asked Mr. Underwood, as if he liked the name, which Gillian remembered to have seen on a cross at Vale Leston.

‘Being sat upon is hardly the best lesson in humility,’ said Harry.

‘There’s apt to be a reaction,’ said Mr. Underwood; ’but the crack voice of a country choir is not often in that condition, as I know too well.  I was the veriest young prig myself under those circumstances!’