Macrae and the Silverfold carriage were actually gone to the station, and, oh! oh! oh! here it really was with papa on the box, and heaps of luggage, and here were Primrose and Gillian and mamma and Mrs. Halfpenny, all emerging one after another, and Primrose, looking—–­oh dear! more like a schoolroom than a nursery girl—–­such a great piece of black leg below the little crimson skirt; but the dear little face as plump as ever.

That was the first apparent fact after the disengaging from the general embrace, when all had subsided into different seats, and Aunt Jane, who had appeared from somewhere in her little round sealskin hat, had begun to pour out the tea.  The first sentence that emerged from the melee of greetings and intelligence was—–­

‘Fly met her mother at the station; how well she looks!’

‘Then Victoria came down with you?’

‘Yes; I am glad we went to her.  I really do like her very much.’

Then Primrose and Valetta varied the scene by each laying a kitten in their mother’s lap; and Begum, jumping after her progeny, brushed Lady Merrifield’s face with her bushy tail, interrupting the information about names.

‘Come, children,’ said Sir Jasper, ’that’s enough; take away the cats.’  It was kindly said, but it was plain that liberties with mamma would not continue before him.

‘The Whites?’ was Gillian’s question, as she pressed up to Aunt Jane.

‘Poor Mrs. White died the night before last,’ was the return.  ’I have just come from Kally.  She is in a stunned state now—–­actually too busy to think and feel, for the funeral must be to-morrow.’

Sir Jasper heard, and came to ask further questions.

‘She saw Alexis,’ went on Miss Mohun.  ’They dressed him in his own clothes, and she seemed greatly satisfied when he came to sit by her, and had forgotten all that went before.  However, the end came very suddenly at last, and all those poor children show their southern nature in tremendous outbursts of grief—–­all except Kalliope, who seems not to venture on giving way, will not talk, or be comforted, and is, as it were, dried up for the present.  The big brothers give way quite as much as the children, in gusts, that is to say.  Poor Alexis reproaches himself with having hastened it, and I am afraid his brother does not spare him.  But Mr. White has bought his discharge.’

‘You don’t mean it.’

’Yes; whether it was the contrast between Alexis’s air of refinement and his private soldier’s turn-out, or the poor fellow’s patience and submission, or the brother’s horrid behaviour to him, Mr. White has taken him up, and bought him out.’

’All because of Richard’s brutal speech.  That is good!  Though I confess I should have let the lad have at least a year’s discipline for his own good, since he had put himself into it; but I can’t be sorry.  There is something engaging about the boy.’