Monica carried him off to make him tidy for tea; the girls joined Sidney in the cosy sitting-room. Both were genuinely glad to see her there.
"We've been up the Beacon," said Jockie. "It's our favourite walk. Oh, dear! I shall be glad of some tea. Talking and climbing are rather exhausting, and our tongues have been hard at it. Gavine says she's going away soon; isn't it a shame of her, when I want her so much?"
"Does your mother want you to leave her so soon?" Sidney asked, turning to Gavine.
"Yes," the girl answered simply; then she added, with a little effort: "We have been talking together, and mother is quite willing that I shall go and do something. You see, my aunts do not really need me. They told me so when I came away; they thought my duty was to stay with my mother."
"And is it not?" asked Sidney.
"Not when it is her wish that I should leave her," said Gavine quietly. "I am going up to London to stay with a clergyman and his wife; he has a curacy in the slums somewhere, and they say they can give me plenty of work. She was at school with me. Jockie knows her."
"Yes; she's not a bit like a clergyman's wife; much too fond of dress and society," said the outspoken Jockie; and then she laughed.
"I expect people say much the same of me—not a bit like a clergyman's cousin; much too fond of fun. I tell Gavine we can give her plenty of parish work, can't me, Miss Urquhart? But I know what she wants—a more rigorous, self-denying life; she wants to live in a kind of cell and be short of food and fires, and go out to early services at six o'clock in the morning, and make herself very ill and bad-tempered."
Monica came back at this juncture, leading a very clean Chuckles by the hand. Then she asked them to come to a sit down tea in the dining-room.
When they were at the table, Sidney asked the small boy what he had been doing with himself all the afternoon. His eyes gleamed.