'Oh, very well; I mean very ill. Worse than ever. I wish you could take him with you for a cruise or two.'
'As they used to take a cask of raw Madeira,' said he, laughing heartily, 'to fine down? Well, you're right about one thing; there's some good stuff in the lad. He might fine down to something good. But he is not in proper guidance.'
'He is in no guidance at all,' sighed his mother.
'Is he going abroad with you?'
'Not he,' said Miss Beresford. 'He wouldn't be bothered with us girls. He will see us as far as Newhaven, perhaps, and make brutal jokes all the way about the Channel.'
'You are going soon, then?' said he. Somehow there was a kind of constraint about this young lieutenant's manner. He seemed to be thinking of something or some one else. His remarks and questions were of the most conventional sort.
'On the 1st of September I think we shall be ready to start.'
'And are you going far?' he said, in the same preoccupied way.
'To Lucerne, first, I imagine; and then over the Splügen, when it is cool enough to go into Italy.'
'Oh, indeed!' said he. And then he added, after a pause, 'Oh, indeed!'