“But you should not have done this, my dear.”
“No; I’ll tell him not to, mother. And I’d made an arrangement with him to meet him every morning out in the primrose dell to practise sword-cutting. I was going to-morrow morning, but I won’t go now.”
Lady Royland pressed her lips to the boy’s forehead, and smiled in his face.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said, softly. “Recollect you are everything to me now! And I want your help and comfort now I am so terribly alone. Master Pawson is profuse in his offers of assistance to relieve me of the management here, but I want that assistance to come from my son.”
“Of course!” said Roy, haughtily. “He’s only the secretary, and if any one is to take father’s place, it ought to be me.”
“Yes; and you shall, Roy, my dear. You are very young, but now this trouble has come upon us, you must try to be a man and my counsellor so that when your father returns—”
She ceased speaking, and Roy pressed her hands encouragingly as he saw her lips trembling and that she had turned ghastly white.
“When your father returns,” she said, now firmly, “we must let him see that we have managed everything well.”
“Then why not, as it’s war time, let Ben do what he wanted, and we’ll put the place in a regular state of defence?”
“No, no, no, my dear,” said Lady Royland, with a shudder. “Why should you give our peaceful happy home even the faintest semblance of war, when it can by no possibility come into this calm, quiet, retired nook. No, my boy, not that, please.”