“Good night, Aunt Lily, I’ll go to bed. I’m tired.”
Then James broke out:
“Really, Hugh, I am surprised at you!”
“Would you have me let anyone—would you have me let Arthur think that I could ever shoot again?”
“Who cares whether you do or not?” said Jem, angrily. “Neither you nor Arthur can live without hearing the subject mentioned, and the only way is to pass it off quietly. He would have got over it in a minute if you had been silent, and next time it would have been a matter of course to him. Now you have raised up a scarecrow for ever.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Crichton. “It would be all very well to let the shooting for a time—”
“Of course, mother, I meant with your permission,” said Hugh, who was very punctilious as to invading his mother’s rights.
“Nonsense, my dear. As if I should interfere with you about it! But now you have made our friends uncomfortable, and Arthur will feel the impossibility of it, instead of slipping back to it naturally by degrees. And you have made a most painful scene.” Here Mrs Crichton herself ended in tears—half-nervous and half-sorrowful.
“It only shows,” said Hugh, passionately, “that life here is impossible for Arthur and me. It is a problem that cannot be worked out. What is there left that has not that awful mark on it: the fields, the river—and would you have it supposed that I do not feel it?”
“I thought,” said James, drily, “that it was Arthur’s feelings, not yours, that were in question.”