The captain gazed for a minute into mother's face, then looked from her to father, from him to uncle Rutherford, and drew a long breath.
"Wa'l!" he ejaculated, "when you folks gets histed to heaven, I reckon there ain't goin' to be no hitch in the histin'. An' them's my opinions."
Having delivered himself of these "opinions," he rose, shook hands with mother, father, and uncle Rutherford, a long hard shake, expressive of his feelings; came into the room where the rest of us were gathered, and went through the same ceremony all round; returned to the library and repeated it, then once more back to the drawing-room for a second pumping of each arm, and finally managed to convey himself away; the last words which father heard as he closed the door behind him being, "No hitch in that histin'."
Two days after, Mrs. Yorke was comfortably settled in our basement, and industriously plying her needle; the captain was on his way home by water, where he would not be apt to go astray; while at a very few hours' notice Theodore had been removed from the one school, and sent to the other.
"Miss Milly," said Jim, meeting my sister in the hall on the afternoon of the day on which he had learned that his rival had been taken from the school they had both attended, and speaking in evident but repressed excitement, "Miss Milly, they say Theodore Yorke has left school for good. Has he, Miss Milly?"
"He has left your school, and been sent to another, Jim, where you will not be likely to meet him soon again," answered Milly.
"And they say it's an awful strict school, Miss Milly, a kind of a bad-boy school, where a feller don't get half so much chance as he does in ours."
"I think the discipline is very strict, Jim," replied his young mistress.
"And," wistfully, "he was sent there because of what he done—I mean, did—to Matty?"
Even in the midst of excitement, Jim was becoming careful to correct himself when he lapsed inadvertently into any inaccuracies of speech.