“I wonder how he will go on when the money is really not there.”
“Precisely the same,” said Bobus; “there’s no cure for that sort of complaint. The only satisfaction is that we shall be out of sight of it.”
“And a very poor one,” sighed Jock, “when mother is left to bear the brunt.”
“Mother can manage him much better than we can,” said Bobus; “besides, she is still a youngish woman, neither helpless nor destitute; and as I always tell you, the greatest kindness we can do her is to look out for ourselves.”
Bobus himself had done so effectually, for he was secure of a handsome salary, and his travelling expenses were to be paid, when, early in the next year, he was to go out with his Principal to confer on the Japanese the highest possible culture in science and literature without any bias in favour of Christianity, Buddhism, or any other sublime religion.
Meantime he was going home to make his preparations, and pack such portions of his museum as he thought would be unexampled in Japan. He had fulfilled his intention of only informing his mother after his application had been accepted; and as it had been done by letter, he had avoided the sight of the pain it gave her and the hearing of her remonstrances, all of which he had referred to her maternal dislike of his absence, rather than to his association with the Principal, a writer whose articles she kept out of reach of Armine and Barbara.
The matter had become irrevocable and beyond discussion, as he intended, before his return to Belforest, which he only notified by the post of the morning before he walked into luncheon. By that time it was a fait accompli, and there was nothing to be done but to enter on a lively discussion on the polite manners and customs of the two-sworded nation and the wonderful volcanoes he hoped to explore.
Perhaps one reason that his notice was so short was that there might be the less time for Kencroft to be put on its guard. Thus, when, by accident of course, he strolled towards the lodge, he found his cousin Esther in the wood, with no guardians but the three youngest children, who had coaxed her, in spite of the heat, to bring them to the slopes of wood strawberries on their weekly half-holiday.
He had seen nothing, but had only been guided by the sound of voices to the top of the sloping wooded bank, where, under the shade of the oak-trees, looking over the tall spreading brackens, he beheld Essie in her pretty gipsy hat and holland dress, with all her bird-like daintiness, kneeling on the moss far below him, threading the scarlet beads on bents of grass, with the little ones round her.
“I heard a chattering,” he said, as, descending through the fern, he met her dark eyes looking up like those of a startled fawn; “so I came to see whether the rabbits had found tongues. How many more are there? No, thank you,” as Edmund and Lina answered his greeting with an offer of very moist-looking fruit, and an ungrammatical “Only us.”