Sir Jasper heard, and came to ask further questions.
‘She saw Alexis,’ went on Miss Mohun. ‘They dressed him in his own clothes, and she seemed greatly satisfied when he came to sit by her, and had forgotten all that went before. However, the end came very suddenly at last, and all those poor children show their southern nature in tremendous outbursts of grief—all except Kalliope, who seems not to venture on giving way, will not talk, or be comforted, and is, as it were, dried up for the present. The big brothers give way quite as much as the children, in gusts, that is to say. Poor Alexis reproaches himself with having hastened it, and I am afraid his brother does not spare him. But Mr. White has bought his discharge.’
‘You don’t mean it.’
‘Yes; whether it was the contrast between Alexis’s air of refinement and his private soldier’s turn-out, or the poor fellow’s patience and submission, or the brother’s horrid behaviour to him, Mr. White has taken him up, and bought him out.’
‘All because of Richard’s brutal speech. That is good! Though I confess I should have let the lad have at least a year’s discipline for his own good, since he had put himself into it; but I can’t be sorry. There is something engaging about the boy.’
‘And Mr. White is the right man to dispose of them.’
No more passed, for here were the children eager and important, doing the honours of the new house, and intensely happy at the sense of home, which with them depended more on persons than on place.
One schoolroom again,’ said Mysie. ‘One again with Val and Prim and Miss Vincent. Oh, it is happiness!’
Even Mrs. Halfpenny was a delightful sight, perhaps the more so that her rightful dominion was over; the nursery was no more, and she was only to preside in the workroom, be generally useful, wait on my lady, and look after Primrose as far as was needful.
The bustle and excitement of settling in prevented much thought of the Whites, even from Gillian, during that evening and the next morning; and she was ashamed of her own oblivion of her friend in the new current of ideas, when she found that her father meant to attend the funeral out of respect to his old fellow-soldier.