“My father intends us to stay at Maxfield. In fact, you may as well know it at once, and let Roger know it too. We’re as poor as church-mice, and can’t afford to do anything else. Oh, how I wish we had stopped where we were!” And her voice actually trembled as she said the words.
It was an uncomfortable position for Mr Armstrong. Once again his mother-wit failed him, and he watched the little hand as it moved up and down the dog’s back in silence.
“I tell you this,” continued the young lady, “because tutors are generally poor, and you’ll understand it. I wish papa understood it half as well. I do believe he really enjoys the prospect of going and landing himself and all of us at that place.”
“You forget that it is by the desire and invitation of the old Squire,” said the tutor.
“Father might easily have declined. He ought to have. He wasn’t like you, fond of Roger. He doesn’t care—at least I fancy he doesn’t—much about Roger at all. Oh, I wish I could earn enough to pay for every bite every one of us eats!”
To the tutor’s immense relief, at this point Captain Oliphant reappeared, followed by Roger with a boy and little girl.
The boy was some years the junior of the heir of Maxfield, a rotund, matter-of-fact, jovial-looking lad, sturdy in body, easy in temper, and perhaps by no means brilliant in intellect. The turmoil of debarkation failed to ruffle him, and the information given him in sundry quarters that he was the fons et origo of all the confusion in the cabin failed to impress him. Everything that befell Tom Oliphant came in the day’s work, and would probably vanish with the night’s sleep. Meanwhile it was the duty of every one, himself included, to be jolly. So he accepted his father’s chidings and Roger’s greetings in equally good part; agreed with every word the former said, and gave in his allegiance to the latter with one and the same smile, and thought to himself how jolly to be in England at last, and perhaps some day to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.
The little maid who tripped at his side was perhaps ten or eleven—an odd blending of the sister’s beauty and alertness with the brother’s vigorous contentment. A prophet, versed in such matters, would have predicted that ten years hence Miss “Jill” Oliphant might seriously interfere with the shape of her elder sister’s nose. But as no prophets were present, only a fogey like Mr Armstrong and an inexperienced boy like Roger, no one concerned themselves about the future, but voted the little lady of ten a winsome child.
“Well, thanks for all your help,” said Tom to his elder sister. “I don’t know what we should have done without her. Eh, Roger?”
“Upon my word, with you in charge down there,” retorted the young lady, “I wouldn’t have been safe in that awful place a minute longer. I wonder you haven’t packed up Jill in one of the trunks.”