“You didn’t go to the Pells, I suppose, did you?” asked Jack.
The Pells is the public garden of Lewes—a paddock, with a piece of ornamental water, on which live a beautiful collection of wild ducks, belonging to the town.
“No, I forgot that; how stupid of me! It is too dark to go now,” said Charlie.
“And no use either, though the goose is there; I have given it to the town,” said Jack.
“What a shame, when I was so fond of it! you only did it to spite me,” cried Charlie, ready to burst into tears, only he was too big to cry about a goose.
“I didn’t do it to spite you; I sent it away because Fairy hated it, and you were always teasing her about it. If you want to see it you can go to the Pells every day if you like and look at it, but I won’t have Fairy teased about it.”
“You won’t have Fairy teased, indeed! Why, she is much more my sister than yours; you have nothing to do with her; I am her foster-brother,” broke out Charlie.
For a moment Jack hesitated, and Charlie put up his arm to ward off the blow he seemed to expect, but on second thought Jack only turned on his heel, and with a bitter laugh muttered contemptuously, “Get out of my way, and don’t talk such stuff, you little idiot.”
They never understood each other, these two brothers. While Charlie thought Jack a book-worm who encroached upon his relationship with Fairy, Jack thought Charlie an idle little boy, not over clean, who would never be anything more than a labouring man to the end of his days, and who had the impertinence to consider himself on an equality with Fairy. With Willy Jack got on much better, though Willy was no cleverer than Charlie, nor any fonder of study; but then he never roused his eldest brother’s jealousy in the way Charlie did. Mrs. Shelley, who understood her eldest son better than anyone else did, always tried to ward off any collisions between the boys, and if that were impossible, took Jack’s part, which always had the effect of mollifying him at once. On this occasion she had heard the squabble between the boys, and as Jack went upstairs to change his clothes before helping Fairy with her lessons, she persuaded Charlie, who had been tramping about the country the whole day, to go to bed before Jack reappeared, promising to bring him up some supper.
But Mrs. Shelley could not be always at her boy’s heels to keep the peace between them, and as Jack grew into manhood she watched with anxious heart his growing passion for Fairy, and his increasing jealousy of his youngest brother. Under any circumstances his love for Fairy would have made her tremble for him, though at present Fairy was such a child it was impossible to say how she might feel in the future with regard to Jack; but Mrs. Shelley thought it far more probable the child would meet someone at the Leslies than that she would choose Jack, whom she had known all her life, and whom she seemed to regard as an elder brother. But when added to this Jack’s jealousy of Charlie grew side by side with his love, like an ugly poisonous weed by the side of a beautiful flower, Mrs. Shelley, in spite of the comfort and joy Fairy was to her, often regretted having taken her in, though, as she told herself, she really did not know what else could she have done.