One o’clock struck on my knuckles, loud enough to be heard over all the room.
“Rupert Domville,” said auntie, “is your brother right in saying that etymology describes insects?”
“Certainly, auntie.”
“But suppose I say that entomology, not etymology, is the science descriptive of insect life, would you then say your brother was right?”
“Assuredly, aunt,” said Jill, boldly.
One o’clock rang out sharp and clear on old Jill’s knuckles, and we were both sent to our seats to think.
The cottage we lived in might have just as well been denominated a villa, only Aunt Serapheema, to whom it belonged, rather despised high-flown names. It was a beautiful old house in the suburbs of a romantic wee fisher village, that nestled under high banks and green braes, not far from the great naval seaport of P—.
My father’s duties at the barracks were not very heavy in our childhood, for there was no war, and though the ride home was a long one, every night almost we listened for the clatter of his horse’s hoofs, whether he came or not, and Jill and I bounded to meet him. His coming was the one great event of the day or week to us all, and he never failed to bring light and sunshine to Trafalgar Cottage.
Our mother was very, very beautiful—Jill and I always thought so—and our father was the beau ideal to our young minds of what a hero ought to be. I think I see him now as he used to look standing by his beautiful black horse, before mounting in the morning, one arm thrown carelessly over the mane, with his fair hair and his blue eyes smiling as he blew kisses to the drawing-room window, and had kisses blown back in return.
Of course you will excuse a son speaking thus of his parents. They might not have been much to any one else, but they were all the world to my brother and me.