’No, my little boy, I mean to trust you, and tell Uncle William that my young soldier is learning the soldier’s first duty—­obedience.’

‘And may I have my knife, mamma?’

Papa had settled that question by himself taking it off the chimney-piece and restoring it.  If mamma wished the penance to have been longer, she neither looked it nor said it.

The young people received the decision with acclamation, and the two elder ones vied with one another in attempts to set her mind at rest by undertaking everything, and promising for themselves and the children perfect regularity and harmony.  Sophy, with a bluntness that King Lear would have highly disapproved, said, ’She was glad mamma was going, but she knew they should be all at sixes and sevens.  She would do her best, and very bad it would be.’

‘Not if you don’t make up your mind beforehand that it must be bad,’ said her uncle.

Sophy smiled, she was much less impervious to cheerful auguries, and spoke with gladness of the pleasure it would give her friend Genevieve to see Mrs. Kendal.

Mr. Ferrars had a short interview with Ulick, and was amused by observing that little Maurice had learnt as much Irish as Ulick had dropped.  After the passing fever about his O had subsided, he was parting with some of his ultra-nationality.  The whirr of his R’s and his Irish idioms were far less perceptible, and though a word of attack on his country would put him on his mettle, and bring out the Kelt in full force, yet in his reasonable state, his good sense and love of order showed an evident development, and instead of contending that Galway was the most perfect county in the world, he only said it might yet be so.

‘Isn’t he a noble fellow?’ cried Albinia, warmly.

‘Yes,’ said her brother; ’I doubt whether all the O’Mores put together have ever made such a conquest as he has.’

’It was fun to see how the aunts were dismayed to find one of the horde in full force here.  I believe it was as a measure of precaution that they took Lucy away.  I was very glad for Lucy to go, but hers was not exactly the danger.’

‘Ha!’ said Maurice; and Albinia blushed.  Whereupon he said interrogatively, ‘Hem?’ which made her laugh so consciously that he added, ’Don’t you go and be romantic about either of your young ladies, or there will be a general burning of fingers.’

’If you knew all our secrets, Maurice, you would think me a model of prudence and forbearance.’

‘Ho!’ was his next interjection, ’so much the worse.  For my own part, I don’t expect prudence will come to you naturally till the little Awk has a lover.’

‘Won’t it come any other way?’

‘Yes, in one way,’ he said, gravely.

’And that way is not easily found by those who have neither humility nor patience,’ she said, sadly, ‘who rush on their own will.’

’Nay, Albinia, it is being sought, I do believe; and remember the lines—­