That afternoon Mary Beresford, now Mrs. Rupert, called, and Mr. Tom, with much dignity of manner, came into the room holding an open letter in his hand,
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'and friends assembled, I have a piece of news for you. Mr. Francis Holford King, late Commander in Her Majesty's Navy, has just contracted a—what d'ye call it?—kind of engagement with Miss Anne Beresford of that ilk. It strikes me this is what is termed consolation-stakes——'
'There you are quite wrong,' said Madge, promptly and cheerfully. 'He meant to make me the consolation-stakes: for it was Nan that he wanted to marry all the way through.'
'Well, I shall be glad to see you all married,' said Tom. 'I've had enough bother with you.'
'You look quite worn out,' his eldest sister remarked.
'At least,' he said, sitting down in an easy-chair and stretching out his legs, 'at least I have gained some wisdom. I see the puzzlement you girls are in who haven't got to earn your own living. You don't know what on earth to do with yourselves. You read Ruskin, and think you should be earnest; but you don't know what to be earnest about. Then you take to improving your mind; and cram your head full of earth-currents, and equinoxes, and eclipses of the moon. But what does it all come to? You can't do anything with it. Even if you could come and tell me that a lime-burner in Jupiter has thrown his wig into the fire, and so altered the spectrum, what's that to me? Then you have a go at philanthropy—that's more practical; Sunday-school teaching, mending children's clothes, doing for other people what they ought to do for themselves, and generally cultivating pauperism. Then, lo and behold! in the middle of all this there comes by a good-looking young fellow; and phew! all your grand ideas are off like smoke; and it's all "Dear Jack!" and "Dear Alfred!" and "I'll go to the ends of the earth with my sodger laddie!" Oh, I know what life is. I see you girls begin with all your fine ideas, and reading up, and earnestness——'
'I suppose, then, there is no such thing as the formation of character,' said his eldest sister, calmly.
'The formation of character!' exclaimed Mr. Tom. 'Out of books? Why, the only one among you who has any character worth mentioning is Nan. Do you think she got it out of books? No, she didn't. She got it—she got it——'
Here Mr. Tom paused for a second; but only to make a wilder dash.
'——out of the sunlight! There's a grand poetical idea for you. Nan has been more in the open than any of you; and the sunlight has filled her brain, and her mind, and her disposition altogether——'