‘No,’ said Maurice, ’Albinia thought her son too mighty for Winifred.  Our laudable efforts at cousinly friendship usually produce war-whoops that bring the two mammas each to snatch her own offspring from the fray, with a scolding for the sake of appearances though believing the other the only guilty party.’

‘Now, Maurice,’ cried Albinia, ’you confess how fond Mary is of setting people to rights.’

‘Well—­when Maurice bullies Alby.’

’Aye, you talk of the mammas, and you only want to make out poor Maurice the aggressor.’

’Never mind, they will work in better than if they were fabulous children.  Ah, you are going to contend that yours is a fabulous child.  Take care I don’t come on you with the indestructible—­’

’Take care I don’t come on you with Mary’s lessons to Colonel Bury on the game-law.’

’Does it not do one good to see those two quarrelling just like old times?’ exclaimed one aunt to the other.

‘And William looking on as contemptuous as ever?’ said Albinia.

’Not at all.  I rejoice to have this week with you.  I should like to see your boy.  Maurice says he is a thorough young soldier.’

Mr. Kendal looked pleased.

The man of study had a penchant for the man of action, and the brothers-in-law were drawing together.  Mars, the great geographical master, was but opening his gloomy school on the Turkish soil, and the world was discovering its ignorance beyond the Pinnock’s Catechisms of its youth.  Maurice treated Mr. Kendal as a dictionary, and his stores of Byzantine, Othman, and Austrian lore, chimed in with the perceptions of the General, who, going by military maps, described plans of operations which Mr. Kendal could hardly believe he had not found in history, while he could as little credit that Mr. Kendal had neither studied tactics, nor seen the spots of which he could tell such serviceable minutiae.

They had their heads together over the map the whole evening, and the next morning, when the General began to ask questions about Turkish, his sister was proud to hear her husband answering with the directness and precision dear to a military man.

‘That’s an uncommonly learned man, Albinia’s husband,’ began the General, as soon as he had started with his brother on a round of errands.

‘I never met a man of more profound and universal knowledge.’

’I don’t see that he is so grave and unlike other people.  Fred reported that he was silence itself, and she might as well have married Hamlet’s ghost.’

‘Fred saw him at a party,’ said Maurice; then remembering that this might not be explanatory, he added, ’He shines most when at ease, and every year since his marriage has improved and enlivened him.’

’I am satisfied.  I hardly knew how to judge, though I did not think myself called upon to remonstrate against the marriage, as the aunts wished.  I knew I might depend on you, and I thought it high time that she should be settled.’