"
"For shame, Bobus; you know I never allow you to say such things."
"Then you should not drag me to Church. Was it last Sunday that I
was comparing the Prussians at Bazeille with—-"
"Hush, my dear boy, you frighten me; you know it is all explained.
Fancy, if we had to deal with a nation of Thugs, and no means of
guarding them—-a different dispensation and all. But here come the
children, so hush."
Bobus gave a nod and smile, which his mother understood only too well
as intimating acquiescence with wishes which he deemed feminine and
conventional.
"My poor boy," she said to herself, with vague alarm and terror,
"what has he not picked up? I must read up these things, and be able
to talk it over with him by the time he comes back from Norway."
There, however, came the morning greeting of Elvira and Barbara,
girls of fourteen and eleven, with floating hair and short dresses,
the one growing up into all the splendid beauty of her early promise,
the other thin and brown, but with a speaking face and lovely eyes.
They were followed by Miss Ogilvie, as trim and self-possessed as
ever, but with more ease and expansiveness of manner.
"So Babie," said her brother, "you've earned your breakfast; I heard
you hammering away."
"Like a nuthatch," was the merry answer.
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