“Is that all?” said Joanna Bowater.
“Really and truly it is! Rose can manage him much better than I can.”
“He is very fond of her; but does he—is he—is his heart in his work?” asked the sister, looking with her honest eyes earnestly at Julius, her contemporary and playfellow as a child, and afterwards the companion with whom she had worked out many a deep problem, rendering mutual assistance that made each enter in no common degree into the inner thoughts of the other.
Julius smiled. “I doubt whether he has come to his heart yet.”
“Why should he be so young? Think what you were at twenty-three.”
“I never had Herbert’s physique; and that makes an immense difference. I had no taste or capacity for what is a great privation to a fine young fellow like him. Don’t look startled! He attempts nothing unfitting; he is too good and dutiful, but—”
“Yes, I know what that but means.”
“Nothing to be unhappy about. You know how blameless he has always been at Eton and Oxford; and though he may view his work rather in a school-boy aspect, and me as a taskmaster, as long as he is doing right the growth is going on. Don’t be unhappy, Jenny! His great clear young voice is delightful to hear; he is capital at choral practices, and is a hero to all the old women and boys, the more so for the qualities that earnestness cannot give, but rather detracts from.”
“You mean that he is not in earnest?”
“Don’t pervert all I say! He is not past the time of life when all appointed work seems a task, and any sort of excuse a valid cause against it; but he is conscientious, and always good-humoured under a scolding,—and Rosamond does not spare him,” he added, laughing.