Mrs. Falconer was rising to follow Bunny, whose loud crying was heard in the hall; but Joyce said:
"Mother, let me go. I had better take all the boys away, mother, and amuse them, if I can. I don't think Bunny need cry like that, though it was too bad to hit him."
"It was indeed," Gilbert Arundel could not help exclaiming fervently, though like all guests in a house, when family disputes are going on, he felt it difficult to know whether to speak or be silent.
"I hate Melville," Piers said fiercely, as he swung himself out of the room after his sister.
Joyce soon persuaded Bunny that he was not much hurt, and said if they would all come up to the seat under the fir-tree she would read to them. The boys willingly consented, and Joyce ran upstairs and fetched the pretty Bible, bound in purple, with its gilt leaves, which she displayed to her admiring brothers.
"But you are not going to read that, Joyce," Piers said. "Isn't it dull? Can't you find the Pilgrim's Progress?"
"Yes," exclaimed Harry; "I like the Giant Despair part, and the history of all the bones and skulls lying about."
"I will read about a giant," Joyce said, "a very pretty story from the Bible."
"Oh! I know," said Ralph; "very well, I don't mind hearing it again."
Joyce seated herself with her brothers round her, and read the familiar Bible story, with a somewhat slow utterance, but with so much dramatic power in the tones of her voice that her listeners were profoundly attentive. Then she talked to them about David, and said she had read that the story was a type of the great battle we had all to fight against the giant of self. She did not know that she had another listener till her brothers had dispersed, and she was left on the seat with the Bible in her hand. Then Mr. Arundel came through the little gate leading from the copse, and looking up at Joyce, said: