"Never into riot! I never heard them stop short of it!"
Mrs. Heron looked at him uncertainly, and took pains to explain herself.
"Up to a certain point, I was going to say, Percival, dear. At the proper age, I think, that discipline, entire and perfect discipline, ought to begin."
"And what is the proper age?" said Percival, ironically. "For it seems to me that the boys are now quite old enough to endure a little discipline."
"Oh, at present," said Mrs. Heron, with undisturbed composure, "they are in Elizabeth's hands. I leave them entirely to her. I trust Elizabeth perfectly."
"Is that the reason why Elizabeth does not dine with us?" said Percival, looking at his step-mother with an expression of deep hostility. But Mrs. Heron's placidity was of a kind which would not be ruffled.
"Elizabeth is so kind," she said. "She teaches them, and does everything for them; but, of course, they must go to school by-and-bye. Dear papa will not let me teach them myself. He tells me to forget that ever I was a governess; but, indeed"—with a faint, pensive smile—"my instincts are too strong for me sometimes, and I long to have my pupils back again. Do I not, Kitty, darling?"
"I was not a pupil of yours very long, Isabel," said Kitty, who never brought herself to the point of calling Mrs. Heron by anything but her Christian name.
"Not long," sighed Mrs. Heron. "Too short a time for me."
At this point Mr. Heron, who noticed very little of what was going on around him, turned to his son with a question about the politics of the day. Percival, with his nose in the air, hardly deigned at first to answer; but upon Vivian's quietly propounding some strongly Conservative views, which always acted on the younger Heron as a red rag is supposed to act upon a bull, he waxed impatient and then argumentative, until at last he talked himself into a good humour, and made everybody else good humoured.