“No, father,—not really,—does it?” And Dick beamed still more.
“And it means that you are not to plague me any more about the City. But there! though you have behaved so badly to me, Dick, I forgive you. Sir Harry and I have been talking over things, and if you will work hard for your degree your mother shall ask the girl down here, and we will see about it, and that is all I can say at present. And so we may as well shake hands upon it too.”
But Dick did more than that; he threw his arm over his father’s shoulder with a movement that was almost caressing.
“Thank you, pater; you are a brick and no mistake!” was all the undemonstrative Briton’s tongue could say. But Mr. Mayne, as he looked in his boy’s face and felt that pressure on his shoulder, thought them sufficiently eloquent.
“There! get along with you, and have it out with your mother,” he growled. But, in spite of his surly tone, Mr. Mayne felt an amount of relief that astonished himself: to see Dick’s face happy again, to have no cloud between them, to know that no domestic discord would harass his soul and render gruel necessary to his well-being, was restoring him to his old self again. Sir Harry longed to throw back his head and indulge in a good laugh as he witnessed this little scene of reconciliation.
Mrs. Mayne, who was sitting somewhat sadly by her own fireside, thinking over that day’s discomfort, was quite taken aback by hearing Dick coming upstairs in his old way—three steps at a time—and then bursting into the room after a hasty knock at the door.
“Mother,” he cried, breathlessly, “Sir Harry Challoner is in the library—and pater wants you to come down and give them 327 some tea—and Sir Henry is going to stop to dinner—and the woodcock is to be cooked—and you are to get the best room ready. But first of all—like the dear, darling mother you are—you are to sit down and write a letter to Nan.”
But the letter was not written then; for how could Bessie keep her husband and his guest waiting for their tea after such an urgent message? And had she not first of all to listen to Dick’s incoherent story, which she heard better from Sir Harry afterwards, who took great pains to explain it to the poor bewildered woman?
Mr. Mayne thought he had never seen Bessie look so handsome since the days he courted her, as she sat smiling at the head of the table in her velvet gown. And Sir Harry, too, was quite charmed with the soft, comely creature.
Later on, while the two elder gentlemen were chatting confidentially over their cigars and whisky-and-water, she did manage to write a few lines to Nan. But it was not much of a letter; for how was she to construct a decent sentence with that torment Dick hanging over the back of her chair and interrupting her every moment? But Nan was not ill pleased by the missive when she received it.