“Poor Mr. Armytage—Captain, I believe, for he has got his commandership. Gill snubs him desperately. I believe she is afraid of herself and her heart.”
“I hope she won’t be a goose. Jasper told me that he is an excellent fellow, and it will be an absolute misfortune if the girl is besotted enough to refuse him.”
“Girls have set up a foolish prejudice against matrimony.”
“Well, I am off. Clement Underwood is a reasonable man, and would not send for me without cause.”
General Mohun came to that opinion when he heard of the scene on the beach, and of the absolute certainty that the contraband goods had been procured at Mrs. Schnetterling’s. Before his visit was over, a note came down on gold-edged, cyphered pink paper, informing the Reverend E. C. Underwood that Mrs. Campbell was much obliged to him for his attention to her son, who was very unwell, entirely from the effects of clotted cream. And while they were still laughing over the scored words, Anna knocked at the door with a message from her aunt, to ask whether they could come and speak to poor Mrs. Edgar, who was in a dreadful state.
“It is not about Adrian, I hope?” said she.
“Oh no, no, my dear; Adrian is all right, thanks to Fergus again,” said her uncle. “He is the boy’s great protector; I only wish they could be always together.”
Poor Mrs. Edgar! Rumours had not been slow in reaching her of the condition in which her scholars had been found, very odd rumours too. One that James Campbell had been brought home insensible, and the two sailors carried on board in the like state; and an opposite report, that the poor dear boys had only made themselves sick with dainties out of Mrs. Schnetterling’s, and it was all a cruel notion of that teetotal ritualist clergyman. Some boys would not speak, others were vague and contradictory, and many knew nothing, Horner and Campbell were absent. Clement much relieved her by giving an account of the matter, and declaring that he feared his own elder nephew was the cause of all the scandal, though he believed that some of her bigger pupils were guilty of obtaining a smaller quantity, knowingly, of the Schnetterling’s illicit wares, chiefly so far for the fun of doing something forbidden—“Stolen waters are sweet.”
“A wicked woman! Surely she should not be allowed to go on.”
“I am going, on the spot, to see what can be done,” said General Mohun; “but indeed I should have thought young Campbell rather too old for your precincts.”