Bob made an indescribable contortion of his figure, charitably supposed to be intended for a bow, and passed on.
'Madam looks palish,' he observed to Johnnie, who was escorting him about; 'I doubt she's not very hearty yet.'
'No, it'll be some time before she's quite strong. Has she ever spoken to you before, Bob?'
'Oh my! yes. Why, she brought me some doctor's stuff and some sweet cold drink when I was so bad with fever two winters ago, and she took and spoke up to me last autumn when I was throwin' stones at parson's chickens. Besides, I've seen her in the school when I was a little chap.' He was evidently proud of his acquaintance with so sweet-spoken and kind a lady, and when he left the garden with the jacket under his arm, remarked, 'I'll make a bigger haycock than e'er a one else in the field right under madam's window, that'll pleasure her, maybe, for it smells fust-rate, it does.'
He fulfilled his intention, and pleased Farmer Jennings so much by his cheerful industry in the hay-field, that he took him on trial for a month as farm-lad, and finding him tolerably satisfactory in that capacity, gave him permanent employment. His impudence was not at once conquered, and brought him into some trouble; but when he found that the farmer and his men would not put up with it as his mother had, he learned to put a check on it, and others besides the seven Campbells encouraged him in taking a turn for the better.
Johnnie still remained 'sans terre,' by his own desire, but worked away in his father's garden as he never had done in the part that was called his own. He began to get on better at school too; and Willie joined him there after the summer vacation, and helped to keep him steady by his example and admonitions. For Willie had certainly a little taste for lecturing; and Lackland, the harum-scarum and good-humoured, was just the boy both to provoke it and to bear it: if he was a Du Guesclin in bravery, he was not in quarrelsomeness, and nothing that Willie could say ever made him angry. The mother, too, became well and strong again, able once more to exercise her sweet influence through all the household; and between the father's firmness and the mother's gentleness, those seven boys were well and wisely trained.
Many years have passed since then, and the seven Campbells are no longer boys Honorius has been taken into partnership with his father, and is known by the whole country-side as 'the young doctor;' Johnnie is serving the Queen in a line regiment in India; and Willie has lately been ordained, and is working hard as a curate in a large manufacturing town. So three of the seven have had their wish. But Seymour has been taken by one of his uncles, a rich banker, into his counting-house; Duncan is not gone to sea,—he has just passed a competitive examination for the Indian Civil Service; as for Archie, he is still only a schoolboy, and he and Honorius live at home, while the others are scattered far and wide.
But nowhere on earth could you find all those seven Campbells now, and there has never been any need to decide on a profession for Georgie: the youngest, the darling, the flower of the flock, has been called to rest the first. Wide tracts of sea and land lie between the mother and her darling Johnnie, and a wider distance still severs her from her little George, yet to her the seven are but as one band, united for ever by a common faith and mutual love. And so much is this the feeling of them all, that if you should chance to meet one of those Campbells, and to ask of their number, I think, like the child in the ballad, he would answer, 'We are Seven.'