“Hans, I marvel how old thou wert when thou wert born!” said Aubrey.
“I think, very like, about as old as you were,” said Hans.
“Well, Mr Louvaine, you are a complete young gentleman!” cried his Aunt Temperance, looking back at him. “To suffer three elder gentlewomen to trudge in the mire, and never so much as offer to hand one of them! Those were not good manners, my master, when I was a young maid—but seeing how things be changed now o’ days, maybe that has gone along with them. Come hither at once, thou vagrant, and give thine hand to thy mother, like a dutiful son as thou shouldest be, and art not.”
“Oh, never mind me!” sighed Faith. “I have given over expecting such a thing. I am only a poor widow.”
“Madam,” apologised Hans, very red in the face, “I do truly feel ashamed that I have no better done my duty, and I entreat you not—”
“I was not faulting thee, lad,” said Temperance. “We have already laden thee with books; and it were too much to look for thee to do thine own duty and other folks’ too. It’s this lazy lad I want. I dare be bound he loveth better to crack jests with his cousins than to be dutiful to his old mother and aunts.”
“Temperance, I am only thirty-nine,” said Faith in an injured voice. “I am the youngest of us three.”
“Oh deary me! I ask your pardon,” cried Temperance, with a queer set of her lips. “Yes, Madam, you are; Edith is an old woman of forty, and I a decrepit creature of forty-five; but you are a giddy young thing of thirty-nine. I’ll try to mind it, at least till your next birthday.”
Lettice laughed, and Aunt Temperance did not look angry, though she pulled a face at her. Edith smiled, and said pleasantly—
“Come, Aubrey, hand thy mother on my side; I will walk with Lettice and Hans.”