(Addie, as she spoke, remembered how her mother used to sneer, "No doubt some day you'll meet your brother in a red jacket with a little cane, his cap very much on one side, and a tail of nursemaids wheeling their perambulators after him." Such remarks had been painful to Addie, but even then she had felt that Mrs. Blake had cause to complain.)
"He was always bought off, I suppose?" said Percival.
"Once papa declared he wouldn't. Oliver went on very quietly for a little while, and was to be a corporal. Then he wrote and said he was going to desert that day week, and he was afraid it might be very awkward for him afterward, especially if he ever enlisted again, but he would take his chance sooner than stop. Papa knew he would do it, so he had to buy him off again."
"But is this going on for ever?"
"No: for the last three years Oliver has been in dreadful disgrace, I don't exactly know why, and we were not allowed to mention his name at home. But I don't care," said Addie impetuously: "if he were ever so foolish, and if he had enlisted in every regiment under the sun, he's my brother."
"And Lottie? Does she stand by him as valiantly?"
"Oliver is nothing to Lottie: he never was. He is nine years older than she is, and when she would really begin to remember him he and mamma were always quarrelling. Besides, he always petted me—not Lottie. And now she despises him because he doesn't stick to anything and get on. No—poor old Noll is my brother, only mine. No one else cares for him, except papa."
"Mr. Blake hasn't given him up, then?"
"Oh, he is angry with Oliver when they are apart, but he always forgives him when they meet. He was really angry this last time, but Oliver wrote to him, and they made it up. Only, my poor old Noll is to be sent over the sea to Canada with a man papa knows something of."
"And this is good-bye? But surely they can't mind your meeting him before he goes?"