The two little girls were very pretty creatures, who combined the best points in both father and mother, but the boy, by one of these freaks of Nature which have been mentioned before, was like neither of them, but rejoiced in a particularly ugly mug of his own invention. He lay asleep in a magnificent cot which his father had had carved for him on the occasion of his birth, covered with a finely embroidered quilt; his black eyes were closed, but his little snub nose, swarthy complexion, and wide mouth, formed a sorry contrast to the lace and linen which enveloped them. No prince of the realm could have been more luxuriously surrounded than was Master Walter Hindes. His sisters were lying in their beds close by, their fair hair straying over their pillows, but their father hardly glanced at them as he crossed the room and bent over the carved cot at the further end. As he gazed at his sleeping son and heir, all the stolid feelings of despair which had occupied his mind during the day seemed to fade away and leave a wealth of passionate love behind them. He stooped down closely and laid his face against that of the slumbering child.
‘My son, my son,’ he murmured, but as the words left his lips, though heard by no one but himself, a vision of Jenny’s face rose before him—of Jenny’s mocking face, as she stood on the edge of the precipice and defied him—and, with a sudden impulse, he drew forth his silk handkerchief and wiped his kiss off his child’s brow.
‘What is that for, my dear?’ asked Mrs Hindes, with a low laugh.
‘A fly—a gnat—’ he stammered, ‘it might disturb Wally in his sleep,’ and he withdrew, at the same moment, from the child’s bed.
‘Won’t you look at Elsie and Laurie?’ whispered the mother, as she passed her arm through his, and pulled him gently towards the girls’ bed. ‘They have been such good maids all day; I took them with me for a drive to call on old Miss Buckstone this afternoon, and she was delighted with them; she wants us to let them go and spend a whole day with her.’
‘And not Wally?’ said Henry Hindes, quickly.
‘Well, she did not ask Master Wally, and she would regret it, I fancy, if she did. He is rather a handful away from home, dearest, you know, and too much used to have his own way; we really must not spoil him so much, or he may come to the same sad end as poor Jenny.’
‘What sad end? What do you mean by saying that?’ demanded Henry Hindes, for the second time that evening.
‘Why, marry without our consent, to be sure, Henry; what else could I mean? Though I hope her marriage may have a happy ending after all. I shall always believe in it and pray for it, until it comes to pass.’
‘Yes, yes, pray for it, Hannah,’ replied her husband. ‘I don’t believe much in prayer myself, but if anybody should ever be heard, it is you! You have been a good wife to me, my dear, I seem to see it more plainly to-night than I have ever done before.’