‘A patent of nobility, said Jasper, smiling.
‘I don’t care,’ said Wilfred; ‘if other people choose to chum with old stonemasons and convicts, I don’t.’
‘Wilfred, that is too bad,’ said Gillian. ‘It is very wrong to talk in that way.’
‘Oh!’ said the audacious Wilfred, ‘we all know who is Gill’s Jack!’
‘Shut up, Will!’ cried Fergus, flying at him. ‘I told you not to—’
But Wilfred bounded up a steep bank, and from that place of vantage went on—
‘Didn’t she teach him Greek, and wasn’t he spoony; and didn’t she send back his valentine, so that—’
Fergus was scrambling up the bank after him, enraged at the betrayal of his confidence, and shouting inarticulately, while poor Gillian moved on, overwhelmed with confusion, and Fly uttered the cutting words, ‘Perfectly disgusting!’
‘Ay, so it was!’ cried the unabashed Wilfred, keeping on at the top of the bank, and shaking the bushes at every pause. ‘So he broke down the rocks, and ran away with the tin, and enlisted, and went to prison. Such a sweet young man for Gill!’
Poor Gillian! was her punishment never to end? That scrape of hers, hitherto so tenderly and delicately hinted at, and which she would have given worlds to have kept from her brothers, now shouted all over the country! Sympathy, however, she had, if that would do her any good. Mysie and Fly came on each side of Ivinghoe, assuring him, in low eager voices, of the utter nonsense of the charge, and explaining ardently; and Jasper, with one bound, laid hold of the tormentor, dragged him down, and, holding his stick over him, said—