It needed only a glance to see that little Julian was in a state of extraordinary excitement. His face was crimson, his eyes were sparkling and yet full of tears; his legs were planted sturdily apart, and his hands were clenched. His head was drawn back, and his whole body also seemed as if it wanted to recoil, but placed as he was against a strong oaken table he could evidently go back no further. The gentleman on the chair was offering him something—Janetta could not at first see what—and the boy was vehemently resisting.
"I won't have it! I won't have it!" he was crying, with the whole force of his lungs. "I won't touch it! Take the nasty stuff away!"
Janetta wondered whether it were medicine he was refusing, and why his father did not insist upon obedience. But Wyvis Brand, still standing by the mantel-piece, only laughed aloud.
"No shirking! Drink it up!" said the strange gentleman, in what Janetta thought a curiously unpleasant voice. "Come, come, it will make a man of you——"
"I don't want to be made a man of! I won't touch it! I promised I never would! You can't make me!"
"You must be taught not to make rash promises," said the man, laughing. "Come now——"
But little Julian had suddenly caught sight of Janetta's figure at the door, and with a great bound he escaped from his tormentor and flung himself upon her, burying his face in her dress, and clutching its folds as if he would never let them go.
"It's the lady! the lady!" he gasped out. "Oh, please don't let them make me drink it! Indeed, I promised not."
Janetta came forward a little, and at her appearance every one looked more or less discomfited. The gentleman on the chair she recognized as a Mr. Strangways, a man of notoriously evil life, who had a house near Beaminster, and was generally shunned by respectable people in the neighborhood. He started up, and looked at her with what she felt to be a rather insolent gaze. Wyvis Brand stood erect, and looked sullen. The other gentleman, who was a stranger, rose from his chair in a civiller manner than his friend had done.
Janetta put her arms round the little fellow, and turned a rather bewildered face towards Mr. Brand. "Was it—was it—medicine?" she asked.