“Then I suppose he will be upon my hands.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t sit there looking judicial.  I’m quite ready to listen to suggestions if you’ve any to make.”

“In the case of any ordinary boy,” said Henry, “I might make lots of suggestions as to the finding of suitable employment.  From what we know of Comus it would be rather a waste of time for either of us to look for jobs which he wouldn’t look at when we’d got them for him.”

“He must do something,” said Francesca.

“I know he must; but he never will.  At least, he’ll never stick to anything.  The most hopeful thing to do with him will be to marry him to an heiress.  That would solve the financial side of his problem.  If he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere and shoot big game.  I never know what the big game have done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies of some of our social misfits.”

Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, was scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting.

Francesca brightened at the matrimonial suggestion.  “I don’t know about an heiress,” she said reflectively.  “There’s Emmeline Chetrof of course.  One could hardly call her an heiress, but she’s got a comfortable little income of her own and I suppose something more will come to her from her grandmother.  Then, of course, you know this house goes to her when she marries.”

“That would be very convenient,” said Henry, probably following a line of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of times before him.  “Do she and Comus hit it off at all well together?”

“Oh, well enough in boy and girl fashion,” said Francesca.  “I must arrange for them to see more of each other in future.  By the way, that little brother of hers that she dotes on, Lancelot, goes to Thaleby this term.  I’ll write and tell Comus to be specially kind to him; that will be a sure way to Emmeline’s heart.  Comus has been made a prefect, you know.  Heaven knows why.”

“It can only be for prominence in games,” sniffed Henry; “I think we may safely leave work and conduct out of the question.”

Comus was not a favourite with his uncle.

Francesca had turned to her writing cabinet and was hastily scribbling a letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid disposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought to his notice, and commanded to his care.  When she had sealed and stamped the envelope Henry uttered a belated caution.

“Perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to say nothing about the boy to Comus.  He doesn’t always respond to directions you know.”

Francesca did know, and already was more than half of her brother’s opinion; but the woman who can sacrifice a clean unspoiled penny stamp is probably yet unborn.

CHAPTER II