“How you speak, Roland! Quite as if you cared not a farthing for your only son! It must be dreadfully galling to him, to see how you prefer that Alice.”
“If he is galled, he never winces,” answered Sir Roland with a quiet smile; “he is the most careless fellow in the world.”
“And the most good-natured, and the most affectionate,” said Lady Valeria, warmly; “nothing else could keep him from being jealous, as nine out of ten would be. However, I am tired of talking now, and on that subject I might talk for ever. Take away that case, if you please, and the writing. On no account would I have them left here. Of course you will lock them away securely, and not think of meddling with them. What is that case made of?”
“I can scarcely make out. Something strong and heavy. A mixture, I think, of shagreen and some metal. But the oddest thing of all is the keyhole. It is at the top of the cone, you see, and of the strangest shape, an irregular heptagon, with some rare complications of points inside. It would be next to impossible to open this case, without shattering it altogether.”
“I do not wish to examine the case, I wish to have it taken away, my son. There, there, I am very glad not to see it; although I am sure I am not superstitious. We shall do very well, I trust, without it. I think it is a most extraordinary thing that your father never consulted me about the writing handed down to you. He must have been bound by some pledge not to do so. There, Roland, I am tired of the subject.”
With these words the ancient lady waved her delicate hand, and dismissed her son, who kissed her white forehead, according to usage, and then departed with case and parchment locked in the oaken box again. But the more he thought over her behaviour, the more he was puzzled about it. He had fully expected a command to open the case, at whatever hazard; and perhaps he had been disappointed at receiving no such order. But above all, he wanted to know why his mother should have been taken aback, as she was, by the sight of these little things. For few people, even in the prime of life, possessed more self-command and courage than Lady Valeria, now advancing into her eighty-second year.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BAITER BAITED.
At the top of the hill, these lofty themes were being handled worthily; while, at the bottom, little cares had equal glance of the democrat sun, but no stars allotted to regard them. In plain English,—Bonny and Jack were as busy as their betters. They had taken their usual round that morning, seeking the staff of life—if that staff be applicable to a donkey—in village, hamlet, and farm-house, or among the lanes and hedges. The sympathy and goodwill between them daily grew more intimate, and their tastes more similar; so that it scarcely seemed impossible that Bonny in the end might learn to eat clover, and Jack to rejoice in money. Open air, and roving life, the ups and downs of want and weal, the freedom of having nothing to lose, and the joyful luck of finding things—these, and perhaps a little spice of unknown sweetness in living at large on their fellow-creatures’ labours, combined to make them as happy a pair, as the day was long, or the weather good. In the winter—ah! why should we think of such trouble? Perhaps there will never be winter again.
At any rate, Bonny was sitting in front of the door of his castle (or rather in front of the doorway, because he was happy enough not to have a door), as proud and contented as if there could never be any more winter of discontent. He had picked up a hat in a ditch that day, lost by some man going home from his inn; and knowing from his patron, the pigman Bottler, that the surest token of a blameless life is to be found in the hat of a man, the boy, stirred by the first heave of ambition, had put on this hat, and was practising hat-craft (having gone with his head as it was born hitherto), to the utter surprise, and with the puzzled protest, of his beloved donkey. It was a most steady church-going hat of the chimney-pot order (then newly imported into benighted regions, but now of the essence of a godly life all over this free country), neither was it such a shocking bad hat as a man would cast away, if his wife were near. For Bonny’s young head it was a world too wide, but he had padded it with a blackbird’s nest; and though it seemed scarcely in harmony with his rakish waistcoat, and bare red shanks (spread on the grass for exhibition, and starred with myriad furze and bramble), still he was conscious of a distinguished air, and nodded to the donkey to look at him.