"
Armine was unconfirmed. The other two had been confirmed just before
Easter, but on the great Sunday Jock had followed his brother
Robert's example and turned away. He had recollected the omission on
that terrible night, and when after a pause Cecil said, "Do you mean
to stay?" he answered rather snappishly, "I suppose so."
"I fancied," said Cecil, with wistful hesitation, "that if we were
together it would be a kind of seal to--"
Jock actually forced back the words, "Don't humbug," which were not
his own, but his ill-temper's, and managed to reply—-
"Well, what?"
"Being brothers in arms," replied Cecil, with shy earnestness that
touched the better part of Jock, and he made a sound of full assent,
letting Cecil, who had a turn for sentiment, squeeze his hand.
He lay with a thoughtful eye, trying to recall some of the good seed
his tutor had tried to sow on a much-trodden way-side, very ready for
the birds of the air. The outcome was—-
"I say, Evelyn, have you any book of preparation? Mine is-—I don't
know where."
Neither his mother, nor Reeves, nor, to do him justice, Cecil
himself, would have made such an omission in his packing, and he was
heartily glad to fetch his manual, feeling Jock's reformation his own
security in the ways which he really preferred.
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