“So much the better for her. She is a good girl, and will be all the happier down here, as well as better. There’s a whole hive of Merrifields to make merry with her; and, by the bye, Cherry, what should you think of housing a little chap for the school here where Fergus Merrifield is?”
“Your dear little Felix? Delightful!”
“Ouf! No, he is booked for our grammar school.”
“The grammar school was not good for any of you, except the one whom nothing hurt.”
“It is very different now. I have full confidence in the head, and the tone is improved throughout. Till my boys are ready for a public school I had rather they were among our own people. No, Cherry, I can’t do it, I can’t give up the delight of him yet; no, I can’t, nor lose his little voice out of the choir, and have his music spoilt.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“I don’t think I spoil him. I really have flogged him once,” said Lance, half wistfully, half playfully.
“How proud you are of it.”
“It was for maltreating little Joan Vanderkist, though if it had only been her brother, I should have said, ‘Go it, boys.’ It was not till afterwards that it turned out that Joan was too loyal not to bear the penalty of having tied our little Audrey into a chair to be pelted with horse-chestnuts.”
“At Adrian’s bidding?”