‘Oh, but, Robin, you know elder ones come first.’
‘A truth we are not likely to forget,’ said Robert. ‘I wish my uncle had been sensible of it. That legacy of his stands between Mervyn and me, and will never do me any good.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Phœbe; ‘Mervyn has always been completely the eldest son.’
‘Ay,’ returned Robert, ‘and with the tastes of an eldest son. His allowance does not suffice for them, and he does not like to see me independent. If my uncle had only been contented to let us share and share alike, then my father would have had
no interest in drawing me into the precious gin and brandy manufacture.’
‘You did not think he meant to make it a matter of obedience,’ said Phœbe.
‘No; he could hardly do that after the way he has brought me up, and what we have been taught all our lives about liberty of the individual, absence of control, and the like jargon.’
‘Then you are not obliged?’
He made no answer, and they walked on in silence across the silvery lawn, the maythorns shining out like flaked towers of snow in the moonlight, and casting abyss-like shadows, the sky of the most deep and intense blue, and the carols of the nightingales ringing around them. Robert paused when he had passed through the gate leading into the dark path down-hill through the wood, and setting his elbows on it, leant over it, and looked back at the still and beautiful scene, in all the white mystery of moonlight, enhanced by the white-blossomed trees and the soft outlines of slumbering sheep. One of the birds, in a bush close to them, began prolonging its drawn-in notes in a continuous prelude, then breaking forth into a varied complex warbling, so wondrous that there was no moving till the creature paused.
It seemed to have been a song of peace to Robert, for he gave a long but much softer sigh, and pushed back his hat, saying, ‘All good things dwell on the Holt side of the boundary.’