Part 58 (2/2)

”Oh,” said Johnnie again, and he surprised his father to the point of making him refrain from any further communication, by adding, ”And then you'll have plenty of time to rummage among those old Turanian verbs and things. But, father?”

”Yes, my boy.”

John looked down into the clear eyes of the great, awkward, swarthy fellow, expecting the question, ”Will this make much difference to my future prospects?” But, no, what he said was, ”I should like to have a _go_ at them too. And you said you would teach me Sanscrit, if ever you had leisure.”

”So I did,” said John, ”and so I will.”

To his own mind these buried roots, counted by the world so dry, proved, as it were, appetising and attractive food. How, then, should he be otherwise than pleased that his son should take delight in the thought of helping him to rake them up, and arguing with him over ”the ninth meaning of a particle?” ”The boy will learn to love money quite soon enough,” he thought.

Johnnie then went his way. It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon; he told his sisters that ”it was all right,” and thereupon resolving no longer to deny themselves the innocent pleasures of life, they sent little Bertram into the town for eighteenpennyworth of ”rock.”

”Where's the change?” he inquired, with the magisterial dignity belonging to his race, when his little brother came home.

Bertram replied with all humility that he had only, been tossing up the fourpenny piece a few times for fun, when it fell into the ditch. He couldn't help it; he was very sorry.

”_Soufflez_ the fourpenny piece,” said Johnnie in a burst of reckless extravagance; ”I forgive you this once. Produce the stuff.”

He felt a lordly contempt for money just then; perhaps it was wrong, but prosperity was spoiling him. He was to retain his pony, and this amiable beast was dear to him.

In the meantime Valentine, established at Melcombe, had been enjoying the sweetness of a no less real prosperity.

From that moment, when the ghost story had melted into mist, he had flung aside all those uneasy doubts which had disturbed his first weeks of possession.

He soon surrounded himself with the luxury that was so congenial to him.

All the neighbourhood called on him, and his naturally sociable temper, amiable, domestic ways, and good position enabled him, with hardly any effort, to be always among a posse of people who suited him perfectly.

There were more ladies than young men in the neighbourhood. Valentine was intimate with half-a-dozen of the former before he had been among them three weeks. He experienced the delights of feminine flattery, a thing almost new to him. Who so likely to receive it? He was eligible, he was handsome, and he was always in a good humour, for the place and the life pleased him, and all things smiled.

In a round of country gaieties, in which picnics and archery parties bore a far larger proportion than any young man would have cared for who was less devoted to the other s.e.x, Valentine pa.s.sed much of his time, laughing and making laugh wherever he went. His jokes were bandied about from house to house, till he felt the drawback in pa.s.sing for a wit. He was expected to be always funny.

But a little real fun goes a long way in a dull neighbourhood, and he had learned just so much caution from his early escapade as to be willing to hail any view concerning himself that might be a corrective of the more true and likely one that he loved to flirt.

He was quite determined, as he thought, not to get into another sc.r.a.pe, and perhaps a very decided intention to make, in the end, an advantageous marriage, may have grown out of the fancy that his romance in life was over.

If he thought so, it was in no very consistent fas.h.i.+on, for he was always the slave (for the day) of the prettiest girl in every party he went to.

It was on a Sat.u.r.day that John Mortimer received his son's proposal for retrenchment; on the Wednesday succeeding it Valentine, sitting at breakfast at Melcombe, opened the following letter, and was amused by the old-fas.h.i.+oned formality of its opening sentence:--

”Wigfield, June 15th, 18--.

”My dear Nephew,--It is not often that I take up my pen to address you, for I know there is little need, as my niece Emily writes weekly.

Frequently have I wondered what she could find to write for; indeed, it was not the way in my youth for people to waste so much time saying little or nothing--which is not my case at the present time, for your sister being gone on the Continent, it devolves upon me, that is not used to long statements, to let ye know, what ye will be very sorry to hear. I only hope it may be no worse before it is over.

”Matthew, the coachman, came running over to me on Monday morning last, and said would I come to the house, for the servants did not know what to be at, and told me that Johnnie, who had been to go back to Harrow by the eleven o'clock train, had got leave to drive the pheaton to the Junction with the four girls in it, and Bertram, who, by ill luck--of I may use such a word (meaning no irreverence)--of this dispensation of Providence, had not gone back to Mr. Tikey's that morning. So far as I can make out, he thought he should be late, and so he turned those two spirited young horses down that steep sandy lane by the wood, to cut off a corner; and whether the woodman's children ran out and frightened them, or whether he was shouting and whooping himself, poor laddie--for I heard something of both--but Barbara was just sobbing her heart away when she told it, and he aye raised the echoes wherever he went; but the horses set off, running away, tearing down that rough road. Johnnie shouted to them all to sit still, and so they did, though they were almost jolted out; and if they had been let alone, there might have been no accident; but two men sprung out of a hedge and tried to stop them, and they turned on to the common, and sped away like the wind towards home, till they came to the sand bank by the small inn, the Loving Cup, and there they upset the carriage, and when the two men got up to it Johnnie and all of them were tossed out, and the carriage was almost kicked to pieces by the horse that was not down.

”This is a long tale, Valentine, and I seem to have hardly begun it. I must take another sheet of paper. When I got to the house, you never saw such a scene. Johnnie had been brought in quite stunned, and his face greatly bruised. There were two doctors already with them. Bertram had got a broken arm; he was calling out, poor little fellow, and Nancy was severely hurt, but I was grieved to see her so quiet. Gladys seemed at first to be only bruised and limping; but she and Barbara were faint and sick with fright. Janie was not present; she had been carried into the inn; but I may as well tell ye that in her case no bones were broken, poor lamb. She is doing very well, and in a day or two is to be brought home.

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