‘I’ll settle them.’
Renewed cries met his ears. ‘No—a strange place—’ he said. ‘I must—’
He put his brother-in-law back with his hand, and was gone. The captain could not contain his vexation, ‘That’s the way those brats serve him every night!’ he exclaimed; ‘they will not attempt to go to sleep without him! Why, I’ve found him writing his sermon with the boy wrapped up in blankets in his lap; there’s no sense in it.’
After about ten minutes, during which Mr. Sandbrook did not reappear, Captain Charteris muttered something about going to see about him, and stayed away a good while. When he came down, he came and sat down by Honora, and said, ‘He is going to bed, quite done for.’
‘That must be better for him than talking here.’
‘Why, what do you think I found? Those intolerable brats would not stop crying unless he told them a story, and there was he with his voice quite gone, coughing every two minutes,
and romancing on with some allegory about children marching on their little paths, and playing on their little fiddles. So I told Miss Cilly that if she cared a farthing for her father, she would hold her tongue, and I packed her up, and put her into her nursery. She’ll mind me when she sees I will be minded; and as for little Owen, nothing would satisfy him but his promising not to go away. I saw that chap asleep before I came down, so there’s no fear of the yarn beginning again; but you see what chance there is of his mending while those children are at him day and night.’
‘Poor things! they little know.’
‘One does not expect them to know, but one does expect them to show a little rationality. It puts one out of all patience to see him so weak. If he is encouraged to take them abroad, he may do so, but I wash my hands of him. I won’t be responsible for him—let them go alone!’
Honora saw this was a reproach to her for the favour with which she had regarded the project. She saw that the father’s weakness quite altered the case, and her former vision flashed across her again, but she resolutely put it aside for consideration, and only made the unmeaning answer, ‘It is very sad and perplexing.’