“They wanted—one or two of them—what a penance it is to have to sit among those people an hour!—they wanted to ask me about the business, but I silenced them. I told them to meet me here this day week.”
Mrs. Mel again said “Oh!” and, pushing into one of the upper rooms, “Here’s your bedroom, Van, just as you left it.”
“Ah, so it is,” muttered Evan, eyeing a print. “The Douglas and the Percy: ‘he took the dead man by the hand.’ What an age it seems since I last saw that. There’s Sir Hugh Montgomery on horseback—he hasn’t moved. Don’t you remember my father calling it the Battle of Tit-for-Tat? Gallant Percy! I know he wished he had lived in those days of knights and battles.”
“It does not much signify whom one has to make clothes for,” observed Mrs. Mel. Her son happily did not mark her.
“I think we neither of us were made for the days of pence and pounds,” he continued. “Now, mother, sit down, and talk to me about him. Did he mention me? Did he give me his blessing? I hope he did not suffer. I’d have given anything to press his hand,” and looking wistfully at the Percy lifting the hand of Douglas dead, Evan’s eyes filled with big tears.
“He suffered very little,” returned Mrs. Mel, “and his last words were about you.”
“What were they?” Evan burst out.
“I will tell you another time. Now undress, and go to bed. When I talk to you, Van, I want a cool head to listen. You do nothing but yawn yard-measures.”
The mouth of the weary youth instinctively snapped short the abhorred emblem.
“Here, I will help you, Van.”