“Is that the under-nurse?” asked Jenny, rather surprised by her juvenility.
“The sole one. My mother and Susan are rather concerned, but Rose asserts that experience in that department is always associated with gin; and she fell in love with this girl—a daughter of John Gadley’s, who is much more respectable than he of the ‘Three Pigeons.’ I suppose it is not in the nature of things for two women to have the same view of nursery matters, unless one have brought up the other.”
“Or even if she have. Witness mamma’s sighs over Mary’s nurses.”
“I thought it was the common lot. You’ve not seen the dining-room.” And the full honours were done. They were pleasant rooms, still unpapered, and the furniture chiefly of amber-coloured varnished deal; the drawing-room, chiefly with green furniture, with only a few brighter dashes here and there, and a sociable amount of comfortable litter already. The study was full of new shelves and old books, and across the window-sill lay a gray figure, with a book and a sheet of paper.
“You here, Terry! I thought you were gone with Rose,” said Julius, as the boy rose to greet Miss Bowater.
“She said I need not, and I hate those garden-parties,” said Terry; and they relieved him of their presence as soon as Jenny had paid her respects to the favourite prints and photographs on the walls.
“He has a passion for the history of Poland just now,” said Julius. “Sobieski is better company than he would meet at Duddingstone, I suspect—poor fellow! Lord Rathforlane has been so much excited by hearing of Driver’s successes as a coach, as to desire Terry to read with him for the Royal Engineers. The boys must get off his hands as soon as possible, he says, and Terry, being cleverest, must do so soonest; but the boy has seen the dullest side of soldiering, and hates it. His whole soul is set on scholarship. I am afraid it is a great mistake.”
“Can’t you persuade him?”
“We have both written; but Rose has no great hopes of the result. I wish he could follow his bent.”
“Yes,” said Jenny, lingering as she looked towards Church-house, “the young instinct ought not to be repressed.”