Fergus hung his head, and faltered something about—“Never saw.”
“No, that is the point. Now I say nothing about your pursuits. I am very glad you should have them, and be an intelligent lad; but they must not be taken up exclusively, so as to drive out all heed to anything else. Remember, there is a great difference between courage and foolhardiness, and that you are especially warned to be careful if your venturesomeness endangers other people’s lives.”
So Fergus went off under a sense of his father’s displeasure, while Adrian lay in his bed, kicking about, admired and petted by his sister, who thought every one very unkind and indifferent to him; and when he went to sleep, began a letter to her eldest sister describing the adventure and his heroism in naming terms, such as on second thoughts she suppressed, as likely to frighten her mother, and lead to his immediate recall.
CHAPTER XI. — HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.—Tempest.
Sunday morning found Anna in a different frame of mind from that of the evening before. Uncle Clement had been very ill all night, and the house was to be kept as quiet as possible. When Anna came in from early Celebration, Aunt Cherry came out looking like a ghost, and very anxious, and gave a sigh of relief on Adrian being reported still sound asleep. Gerald presently came down, pale and languid, but calling himself all right, and loitering over his breakfast till after the boy appeared, so rosy and ravenous as to cause no apprehension, except that he should devour too much apricot jam, and use his new boots too noisily on the stairs.
Anna devised walking him to Beechcroft to hear if there were any news of Fergus, and though he observed, with a certain sound of contemptuous rivalship, that there was no need, for “Merrifield was as right as a trivet,” he was glad enough to get out of doors a little sooner, and though he affected to be bored by the kind inquiries of the people they met, he carried his head all the higher for them.
Nobody was at home except General Mohun, but he verified Adrian’s impression of his nephew’s soundness, whatever the mysterious comparison might mean; and asked rather solicitously not only after Mr. Underwood but after Gerald, who, he said, was a delicate subject to have made such exertions.
“It really was very gallant and very sensible behaviour,” he said, as he took his hat to walk to St. Andrew’s with the brother and sister, but Anna was conscious of a little pouting in Adrian’s expression, and displeasure in his stumping steps.