The elder Maurice could hardly help shrugging his shoulders. Well did he know that Mr. Kendal would have joined the team if such had been the will of that sovereign in scarlet merino, who stood with one hand in Gilbert’s, and the whip in the other.
‘Come here, Maurice,’ quoth Albinia; ‘put down the whip,’ and she extracted it from his grasp, with grave resolution, against which he made no struggle, gave it to Lucy to be put away, and seated him on her knee. ‘Now listen, Maurice; poor sister Sophy is tired, and you are never to make a horse of her. Do you hear?’
‘Yes,’ said Maurice, fidgeting.
‘Mind, if ever you make a horse of Sophy, mamma will put you into the black cupboard. You understand?’
‘Sophy shan’t be horse,’ said Maurice. ‘Sophy naughty, lazy horse. Boy has Gibbie—’
‘There’s gratitude,’ said Mr. Ferrars, as ‘Boy’ slid off his mamma’s knee, stood on tiptoe to pull the door open, and ran after Gilbert to grandmamma’s room.
‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘no one is grateful for services beyond all reason. So, Sophy, mind, into the cupboard he goes, the very next time you are so silly as to be a horse.’
‘To punish which of them?’ asked her brother.
‘Sophy knows,’ said Albinia.
Sophy was too miserable to smile. Sarah Anne Drury had been calling, and on hearing of Gilbert’s indisposition, had favoured them with ‘mamma’s remarks,’ and when Mrs. Kendal was blamed, Sophy had indignantly told Sarah Anne that she knew nothing about it, and had no business to interfere. Then followed the accusation, that Mrs. Kendal had set the whole family against their old friends, and Sophy had found all her own besetting sins charged upon her step-mother.