Dick’s turn would come first.
“Mother,” he would say, as he lounged into the room where she sat knitting by the firelight and thinking of her boy—for just now she was heart and soul on Dick’s side—and full of yearning for the sweet girl whom he wanted for his wife, “I 316 don’t know how long this sort of thing is going on, but I don’t think I can put up with it much longer.”
“Have you not had a nice walk with your father?” she asked, anxiously.
“Oh, yes; the walk was well enough. We had some trouble with Vigo, though, for he startled a pheasant in Lord Fitzroy’s preserve, and then he bolted after a hare. I had quite a difficulty in getting him to heel.”
“These walks do your father so much good, Dick.”
“That is what you always say; but I do not think I can stand many more of them. He will talk of everything but the one subject, and that he avoids like poison. I shall have to bring him to book directly, and then there will be no end of a row. It is not the row I mind,” continued Dick, rather ruefully; “but I hate putting him out and seeing him cut up rough. If he would only be sensible and give me my way in this, there is nothing I would not do to please him. You must talk to him; you must indeed, mother.” And then Mrs. Mayne, with a sinking heart, promised that she would do what she could.
And after that it would be her husband’s turn.
“I tell you what Bessie; I am not satisfied about that boy,” he remarked, once, as he came in to warm his hands before going upstairs to dress for dinner. “I don’t know from whom he gets his obstinacy,—not from either of us, I am sure of that,—but his cheerfulness does not deceive me. He means mischief; I can see that plainly.”
“Oh, Richard! And Dick has been so nice to you ever since he came home. Why, he has not once asked to have any of his friends down to stay. And before this he was never content unless we filled the house. He takes walks with you, and is as domesticated and quiet as possible, so different from other young fellows, who are always racketing about.”
“That is just what bothers me,” returned her husband, crossly. “You have no discernment, Bessie, or you would know what I mean. I should not care a straw if Dick were to cram the house with young fellows: that sort of larking is just natural at his age. Why, he quite pooh-poohed the idea of a dinner-party the other night, though I planned it for his pleasure. His mind is set on other things, and that is why I say he is up to mischief.”