But Blasius had no such intention. He advanced with a confidential nod to his mother, a perfect picture of sturdy, healthy, naked babyhood; beautiful in its curves and dimples.
"Blazeth's a pore 'ickle beggar boy wif no thoes or 'tockings or---- Oh, mummie! that tickles awful!"
The mellow chant ended abruptly, for Lady George had dashed at him with an Algerian antimacassar, and now held him in her arms, trying hard to be grave. She might have succeeded but for the Reverend James's face of bland concern. That finished her, and she gave up the struggle in a peal of laughter, in which her companion tried to join feebly.
"Bring Master Blasius' flannel dressing-gown, please," she said, when nurse, full of explanations and excuses, flew in in a flurry; "that and the antimacassar will keep him warm, and he can have his tea with me."
This incident, however, made it quite impossible for her to continue the rôle she had been playing before. How could she? with Blasius huddled up on her lap, eating bread and jam between his attempts to count his bare toes; an arithmetical problem which he insisted on solving, despite her efforts with the antimacassar. Not that the necessity for change mattered, since she had a variety of other parts to fall back upon, and so, being slightly bored by the Reverend James's failure to respond, and evident disposition to remain the spiritual director, she assumed that of Great Lady and Helper-in-General to her world. In which character, she gave it as her opinion that all parish clergymen should be married--if only in order to make them understand children, and grasp the true bearings of the education question.
Whereat he blushed violently, and five minutes afterwards had confided his hopes regarding Marjory to his hostess's sympathising ears. Nothing could be more suitable, she told him; in fact, the idea had occurred to her before, and she had no doubt that he would bring his suit to a successful issue. Only, as a woman of the world who had seen more of life than he had, she would advise a little boldness, a trifle more self-assertion. His position, she said, was really an excellent one on the whole, and she need hardly say that both she and her brother would welcome Mrs. Gillespie as one of themselves.
So, with a complete reversal of their mutual positions, they parted, and the Reverend James as he walked home, full of blushes and budding hopes, told himself that since Lady George agreed with the Bishop it was time he bestirred himself. The picnic at the old burying-ground would afford him an excellent opportunity of proposing, and if he made up his mind definitely on that point, it would make him less nervous.
So when he reached home he went to the calendar of the daily lesson, which hung by his bed, and ticked off the five days remaining to him, just as schoolboys tick off their holidays. Five days--and then--yes! then he would ask Marjory to marry him.
[CHAPTER XX.]
A morning in late September on a Highland loch. How good it is to be there! The centre just rippled with crisp waves, while shorewards the rocks show mirrored clearly in the smooth water, each bunch of russet bracken or tuft of yellow bent almost more brilliant in the reflection than the reality. The hills free from haze, standing like sentinels, solid and firm; the wild cherry leaves aping the scarlet of the rowan berries, the birch trees beginning to drop their golden bribe into the still, emerald laps of the mossy hollows, as if seeking to buy the secret of perpetual summer.