'Then he should have said so,' remarked Vernon, sententiously. He had lived all his little life in grown-up society, and had been allowed to hear everything, and to talk about everything, whereby he had come to consider himself an oracle.
'The doctor thinks your poor papa has a lym—lym—'
'Lymphatic temperament?' suggested Ida.
'Yes, dear, that's the name of his complaint,' replied Lady Palliser, who was not scientific. 'He has a—well, that particular disease,' continued the little woman, breaking down again, 'and he ought to diet himself and take regular exercise; and he won't diet himself, and he won't walk or ride; and I lay awake at nights thinking of it,' she concluded, piteously.
'You can't lay awake,' said the boy; 'Ida says you can't. You can lay down your hat or your umbrella, but you can't lay. It's impossible.
'But I tell you I do, Vernie; I lay awake night after night,' protested
Lady Palliser, not seeing the grammatical side of the question. 'Oh,
Vernie!' as the folio plates gave an alarming crackle, 'you are tearing
that beautiful big book which cost your grandfather so much money.'
'It's a nasty book,' said Vernon, 'all houses and posts and things. Show me some nice books, Ida; please, do.'
Ida was sitting on the carpet beside him in the next minute and together they went through a bulky quarto Shakespeare with awe-inspiring illustrations by Fuseli. She told him what the pictures meant, and this naturally compelled her to tell the stories of the plays, and in this manner she kept him amused till it was time to dress for dinner, and almost bedtime for the little man. The happiest hours of her life were those in which she devoted herself mentally and bodily to her young brother. If he had loved her in adversity a year ago, he loved her still better in prosperity, when she was able to do so much more for his comfort and amusement. He was rarely out of her sight, the companion of all her rides and rambles, the exacting charge of her life. Brian Walford was not slow to perceive that the boy took precedence of him in all his wife's thoughts, that the boy's society was more agreeable to her than that of her husband, and his health and happiness of more importance. As a wife she was amiable, submissive, dutiful; but it needed no hypersensitiveness on the husband's part to warn him that she gave him duty without love, submission without reverence or esteem. The consciousness of his wife's indifference made Mr. Wendover less agreeable than he had been during that brief courtship among the willows and rushes by the river. He was inclined to be captious, and did not conceal his jealousy of the boy from Ida, although he set a watch upon his tongue in the presence of Vernon's father and mother.
After all it was a rather pleasant thing to have free quarters at Wimperfield, to have hunters to ride, and covers to shoot over which were almost as much his own as if they had belonged to him. Sir Reginald Palliser had a large way of conferring benefits, which was instinctive in a man of his open and careless temper. Having given Brian Wendover what he called the run of his teeth at Wimperfield, he had no idea of limiting the privileges of residence there. Even when the stud-groom grumbled at the laming of a fine horse by injudicious bucketting up hill and down hill in a lively run with the Petersfield Harriers. Sir Reginald made light of the injury, and sent Pepperbox into the straw-yard to recover at his leisure. His own use of the stable was restricted to an occasional ride on an elderly brown cob, of aristocratic lineage and manners that would have been perfect but for the old-gentleman-like habit of dropping asleep over his work. The new baronet was too lazy to hunt, too liberal to put down the hunting stable established by his predecessor. The horses were there—let Ida and Brian ride them. Of those good things which the blind goddess had flung into his lap nothing was too good for his daughter or his daughter's husband in Sir Reginald's opinion.
Happily for the domestic peace, Lady Palliser was able to get on harmoniously with her stepdaughter's husband, and was not disposed to grudge him the luxuries of Wimperfield.