"You must both make your home with me, dears, else it will not be home," said the Colonel feverishly, as he leaned forward, taking a hand of each, and gazing eagerly first into one face, and then into the other.
"We shall, for a while at least, Eric," said Lady Esmondet tenderly.
"And what do you say, Vaura dear; you will not leave me and Haughton
Hall again?"
This he said with nervous haste, as though even in the rest her return gave him, he must have a surety of it's continuing.
"I shall not even think of leave-taking, dear uncle, but if I should, I shall pack you up and take you with me," she said pityingly, noticing how he leaned on her, and also the reckless tone in which he spoke before Blanche; turning to Miss Tompkins, he continued in same tone:
"Who ran down the hare last night?"
Here was a puzzler for la petite, but she was equal to the occasion, even though she was at London.
"No conundrum, Colonel, with the Major as hare."
"Gad, I must get rid of him; they all see it."
"And they all do it, Colonel," tittered Blanche; "keep cool; the Major keeps cool—to you;" this she said, liking the Colonel, but thinking him, to use her own expression, "soft."