Gilbert became the most talkative as they drew near home, and was the first to spring out and open the hall door, displaying his two sisters harnessed tandem-fashion with packthread, and driven at full speed by little Maurice, armed with the veritable carriage whip!  The next moment it was thrown down, with a rapturous shout, and Maurice was lost to everything but his brother!

‘Oh! girls, how could you let him serve you so?’ began the horrified Albinia.  ‘Sophy will be laid up for a week!’

‘Never mind,’ said Sophy, dropping on a chair.  ’Poor little fellow, he wished it so much!’

‘I tried to stop her, mamma,’ said Lucy, ’but she will do as Maurice pleases.’

’See, this is the way they will spoil my boy, the instant my back is turned!’ said Albinia.  ’What’s the use of all I can do with him, if every one else will go and be his bond-slave!  I do believe Sophy would let him kill her, if he asked her!’

‘It is no real kindness,’ said Mr. Kendal.  ’Their good-nature ought not to go beyond reason.’

The elder Maurice could hardly help shrugging his shoulders.  Well did he know that Mr. Kendal would have joined the team if such had been the will of that sovereign in scarlet merino, who stood with one hand in Gilbert’s, and the whip in the other.

‘Come here, Maurice,’ quoth Albinia; ‘put down the whip,’ and she extracted it from his grasp, with grave resolution, against which he made no struggle, gave it to Lucy to be put away, and seated him on her knee.  ’Now listen, Maurice; poor sister Sophy is tired, and you are never to make a horse of her.  Do you hear?’

‘Yes,’ said Maurice, fidgeting.

’Mind, if ever you make a horse of Sophy, mamma will put you into the black cupboard.  You understand?’

‘Sophy shan’t be horse,’ said Maurice.  ’Sophy naughty, lazy horse.  Boy has Gibbie—­’

‘There’s gratitude,’ said Mr. Ferrars, as ‘Boy’ slid off his mamma’s knee, stood on tiptoe to pull the door open, and ran after Gilbert to grandmamma’s room.

‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ’no one is grateful for services beyond all reason.  So, Sophy, mind, into the cupboard he goes, the very next time you are so silly as to be a horse.’

‘To punish which of them?’ asked her brother.

‘Sophy knows,’ said Albinia.

Sophy was too miserable to smile.  Sarah Anne Drury had been calling, and on hearing of Gilbert’s indisposition, had favoured them with ‘mamma’s remarks,’ and when Mrs. Kendal was blamed, Sophy had indignantly told Sarah Anne that she knew nothing about it, and had no business to interfere.  Then followed the accusation, that Mrs. Kendal had set the whole family against their old friends, and Sophy had found all her own besetting sins charged upon her step-mother.

‘My dear!’ said Albinia, ’don’t you know that if a royal tiger were to eat up your cousin John in India, the Drurys would say Mrs. Kendal always let the tigers run about loose!  Nor am I sure that your faults are not my fault.  I helped you to be more exclusive and intolerant, and I am sure I tried your temper, when I did not know what was the matter with you—­’