The next evening there was time for a grand review in the parish school-room of all possible performers on the spot. In the midst, however, a sudden fancy flashed across Lancelot that there was something curiously similar between those two young people who occupied the stage, or what was meant to be such. Their gestures corresponded to one another, their voices had the same ring, and their eyes wore almost of the same dark colour. Now Gerald’s eyes had always been the only part of him that was not Underwood, and had never quite accorded with his fair complexion.
“Hungarian, I suppose,” said Lance to himself, but he was not quite satisfied.
What struck him as strange was that though dreadfully shy and frightened when off the stage, as soon as she appeared upon it, though not yet in costume, she seemed to lose all consciousness that she was not Mona.
Perhaps Mrs. Henderson could have told him. Her husband being manager and partner at Mr. White’s marble works, she had always taken great interest in the young women employed, had actually attended to their instruction, assisted in judging of their designs, and used these business relations to bring them into inner contact with her, so that her influence had become very valuable. She was at the little room which she still kept at the office, when there was a knock at the door, and “Miss Schnetterling” begged to speak to her. She felt particularly tender towards the girl, who was evidently doing her best in a trying and dangerous position, and after the first words it came out—
“Oh, Mrs. Henderson, do you think I must be Mona?”
“Have you any real objection, Lydia? Mr. Flight and all of them seem to wish it.”
“Yes, and I can’t bear not to oblige Mr. Flight, who has been so good, so good!” cried Lydia, with a foreign gesture, clasping her hands. “Indeed, perhaps my mother would not let me off. That is what frightens me. But if you or some real lady could put me aside they could not object.”
“I do not understand you, my dear. You would meet with no unpleasantness from any one concerned, and you can be with the fairy children. Are you shy? You were not so in the fairy scenes last winter—you acted very nicely.”
“Oh yes, I liked it then. It carries me away; but—oh! I am afraid!”
“Please tell me, my dear.”
Lydia lowered her voice.
“I must tell you, Mrs. Henderson, mother was a singer in public once, and a dancer; and oh! they were so cruel to her, beat her, and starved her, and ill-used her. She used to tell me about it when I was very little, but now I have grown older, and the people like my voice, she is quite changed. She wants me to go and sing at the Herring-and-a-Half, but I won’t, I won’t—among all the tipsy men. That was why she would not let me be a pupil-teacher, and why she will not see a priest. And now—now I am sure she has a plan in her head. If I do well at this operetta, and people like me, I am sure she will get the man at the circus to take me, by force perhaps, and then it would be all her life over again, and I know that was terrible.”
Poor Ludmilla burst into tears.
“Nay, if she suffered so much she would not wish to expose you to the same.”
“I don’t know. She is in trouble about the shop—the cigars. Oh! I should not have told! You won’t—you won’t—Mrs. Henderson?”
“No, you need not fear, I have nothing to do with that.”
“I don’t think,” Lydia whispered again, “that she cares for me as she used to do when I was a little thing. Now that I care for my duty, and all that you and Mr. Flight have taught me, she is angry, and laughs at English notions. I was in hopes when I came to work here that my earnings would have satisfied her, but they don’t, and I don’t seem to get on.”
Mrs. Henderson could not say that her success was great, but she ventured as much as to tell her that Captain Henderson could prevent any attempt to send her away without her consent.
“Oh! but if my mother went too you could not hinder it.”
“Are you sixteen, my dear? Then you could not be taken against your will.”
“Not till December. And oh! that gentleman, the conductor, he knew all about it, I could see, and by and by I saw him lingering about the shop, as if he wanted to watch me.”
“Mr. Lancelot Underwood! Oh, my dear, you need not be afraid of him, he is a brother of Mrs. Grinstead’s, a connection of Miss Mohun’s; and though he is such a musician, it is quite as an amateur. But, Lydia, I do think that if you sing your best, he may very likely be able to put you in a way to make your talent available so as to satisfy your mother, without leading to anything so undesirable and dangerous as a circus.”
“Then you think I ought—”
“It is a dangerous thing to give advice, but really, my dear, I do think more good is likely to come of this than harm.”
CHAPTER XIII. – TWO SIDES OF A SHIELD AGAIN
The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale.
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The earlier proofs of the Mouse-trap were brought by Lance, who had spent more time in getting them into shape than his wife approved, and they were hailed with rapture by the young ladies on seeing themselves for the first time in print. As to Gerald, he had so long been bred—as it were—to journalism that, young as he was, he had caught the trick, and ‘The Inspector’s Tour’ had not only been welcomed by the ‘Censor’, but portions had been copied into other papers, and there was a proposal of publishing it in a separate brochure. It would have made the fortune of the Mouse-trap, if it had not been so contrary to its principles, and it had really been sent to them in mischief, together with The ‘Girton Girl’, of which some were proud, though when she saw it in print, with a lyre and wreath on the page, sober Mysie looked grave.
“Do you think it profane to parody Jane Taylor?” said Gerald.
“No, but I thought it might hurt some people’s feelings, and discourage them, if we laugh at the High School.”
“Why, Dolores goes to give lectures there,” exclaimed Valetta.
“Nobody is discouraged by a little good-humoured banter,” said Gillian. “Nobody with any stuff in them.”
“There must be some training in chaff though,” said Gerald, “or they don’t know how to take it.”
“And in point of fact,” said Dolores, “the upper tradesmen’s daughters come off with greater honours in the High School than do the young gentlewomen.”
“Very wholesome for the young Philistines,” said Gerald. “The daughters of self-made men may well surpass in energy those settled on their lees.”
Gerald and Dolores were standing with their backs to the wall of Anscombe Church, which Jasper Merrifield and Mysie were zealously photographing, the others helping—or hindering.
“I thought upper tradesfolk were the essence of Philistines,” returned Dolores.
“The elder generation—especially if he is the son of the energetic man. The younger are more open to ideas.”
“The stolid Conservative is the one who has grown up while his father was making his fortune, the third generation used to be the gentleman, now he is the man who is tired of it.”
“Tired of it, aye!” with a sigh.
“Why you are a man with a pedigree!” she returned.
“Pedigrees don’t hinder—what shall I call it?—the sense of being fettered.”
“One lives in fetters,” she exclaimed. “And the better one likes one’s home, the harder it is to shake them off.”
He turned and looked full at her, then exclaimed, “Exactly,” and paused, adding, “I wonder what you want. Has it a form?”
“Oh yes, I mean to give lectures. I should like to see the world, and study physical science in every place, then tell the next about it. I read all I can, and I think I shall get consent to give some elementary lectures at the High School, though Uncle Jasper does not half like it, but I must get some more training to do the thing rightly. I thought of University College. Could you get me any information about it?”
“Easily; but you’ll have to conquer the horror of the elders.”
“I know. They think one must learn atheism and all sorts of things there.”
“You might go in for physical science at Oxford or Cambridge.”
“I expect that is all my father would allow. In spite of the colonies, he has all the old notions about women, and would do nothing Aunt Lily really protested against.”
“You are lucky to have a definite plan and notion to work for. Now fate was so unkind as to make me a country squire, and not only that, but one bound down, like Gulliver among the Liliputians, with all manner of cords by all the dear good excellent folks, who look on that old mediaeval den with a kind of fetish-worship, sprung of their having been kept out of it so long, and it would be an utter smash of all their hearts if I uttered a profane word against it. I would as soon be an ancient Egyptian drowning a cat as move a stone of it. It is a lovely sort of ancient Pompeii, good to look at now and then, but not to be bound down to.”
“Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil. It is very well there are such places.”
“Yes, but not to be the hope of them. It is my luck. If my eldest uncle, who had toiled in a bookseller’s shop all his youth and reigned like a little king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, there he would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar of Church and State, and I should be a free man.”
“Won’t they let you go about, and see everything?”
“Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting. They are no fools; if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, there would be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integument of rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more raw than I care to carry about. After all, it is only a globe, and one gets back to the same place again.”
“Men have so many openings.”
“I’m not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would be worse for their hearts,” he said, with a sigh.
“There’s journalism, a great power.”
“Yes, but to put my name to all I could—and long to say—would be an equal horror to the dear folks.”
“Yet you are helping on this concern.”
“True, but partly pour passer le temps, partly because I really want to hear ‘The Outlaws Isle’ performed, and all under protest that the windmill will soon be swept away by the stream.”
“Indeed, yes,” cried Dolores. “They hope to regulate the stream. They might as well hope to regulate Mississippi.”
“Well-chosen simile! The current is slow and sluggish, but irresistible.”
“Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud.”
“Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals,” said Gerald sadly.
“Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful,” said Dolores, “but one can’t live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my Aunt Jane, really the cleverest of any of us! Or like Mysie, not stupid, but wrapped up in her classes, just scratching the surface. Now, if I went in for good works I would go to the bottom—down to the slums.”
“Slums are one’s chief interest,” said Gerald; “but no doubt it will soon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish—”
“What?”
“That there could be a revolution before I am of age.”
“What’s that?” cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke. “A revolution?”
“Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,” said Gerald lightly.
“Oh! you don’t really mean it.”
“Not that sort,” said Dolores. “Only the coming of the coquecigrues.”
“They are in ‘The Water Babies’,” said Primrose, mystified.
Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort of fellow-captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the ‘Censor’ and its fellows. Love is not often the first thought, even where it lurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; and though Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea only worthy of her. Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could not but communicate it to her sister, though adding—
“I don’t believe in it: Dolores is in love with Physiology, and the boy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other, unless they work round in some queer fashion.”
However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, was anxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she was becoming more and more intimate. She was more than twenty years the senior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suited one another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to one another. Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly from having had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carking cares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share of responsibility.
“Your nephew’s production has made a stir,” said she, when they found themselves alone together.
“Yes, poor boy.” Then answering the tone rather than the words, “I suppose it is the lot of one generation to be startled by the next. There is a good deal of change in the outlook.”
“Yes,” said Lady Merrifield. “The young ones, especially the youngest, seem to have a set of notions of their own that I cannot always follow.”
“Exactly,” said Geraldine eagerly.
“You feel the same? To begin with, the laws of young ladyhood—maidenliness—are a good deal relaxed—”
“There I am not much of a judge. I never had any young ladyhood, but I own that the few times I went out with Anna I have been surprised, and more surprised at what I heard from her sister Emily.”
“What we should have thought simply shocking being tolerated now.”
“Just so; and we are viewed as old duennas for not liking it. I should say, however, that it is not, or has not, been a personal trouble with me. Anna’s passion is for her Uncle Clement, and she has given up the season on his account, though Lady Travis Underwood was most anxious to have her; and as to Emily, though she is obliged to go out sometimes, she hates it, and has a soul set on slums and nursing.”
“You mean that the style of gaieties revolts a nice-minded girl?”
“Partly. Perhaps such as the Travis Underwoods used to take part in, rather against their own likings, poor things, are much less restrained for the young people than what would come in your daughters’ way.”
“Perhaps; though Lady Rotherwood has once or twice in country-houses had to protect her daughter, to the great disgust of the other young people. That is one development that it is hard to meet, for it is difficult to know where old-fashioned distaste is the motive, and where the real principle of modesty. Though to me the question is made easy, for Sir Jasper would never hear of cricket for his daughters, scarcely of hunting, and we have taken away Valetta and Primrose from the dancing-classes since skirt-dancing has come in; but I fear Val thinks it hard.”
“Such things puzzle my sisters at Vale Leston. They are part of the same spirit of independence that sends girls to hospitals or medical schools.”
“Or colleges, or lecturing. Dolores is wild to lecture, and I see no harm in her trying her wings at the High School on some safe subject, if her father in New Zealand does not object, though I am glad it has not occurred to any of my own girls.”
“Sir Jasper would not like it?”
“Certainly not; but if my brother consents he will not mind it for Dolores. She is a good girl in the main, but even mine have very different ideals from what we had.”
“Please tell me. I see it a little, and I have been thinking about it.”
“Well, perhaps you will laugh, but my ideal work was Sunday-schools.”
“Are not they Miss Mohun’s ideal still?”
“Oh yes, infinitely developed, and so they are my cousin Florence’s—Lady Florence Devereux; but the young ones think them behind the times. I remember when every girl believed her children the prettiest and cleverest in nature, showed off her Sunday-school as her pride and treasure, and composed small pink books about them, where the catastrophe was either being killed by accident, or going to live in the clergyman’s nursery. Now, those that teach do so simply as a duty and not a romance.”
“And the difficulty is to find those who will teach,” said Geraldine. “One thing is, that the children really require better teaching.”
“That is quite true. My girls show me their preparation work, and I see much that I should not have thought of teaching the Beechcroft children. But all the excitement of the matter has gone off.”
“I know. The Vale Leston girls do it as their needful work, not with their hearts and enthusiasm. I expect an enthusiasm cannot be expected to last above a generation and perhaps a half.”
“Very likely. A more indifferent thing; you will laugh, but my enthusiasm was for chivalry, Christian chivalry, half symbolic. History was delightful to me for the search for true knights. I had lists of them, drawings if possible, but I never could indoctrinate anybody with my affection. Either history is only a lesson, or they know a great deal too much, and will prove to you that the Cid was a ruffian, and the Black Prince not much better.”
“And are you allowed the ‘Idylls of the King’?”
“Under protest, now that the Mouse-trap has adopted Browning for weekly reading and discussion. Tennyson is almost put on the same shelf with Scott, whom I love better than ever. Is it progress?”
“Well, I suppose it is, in a way.”
“But is it the right way?”
“That’s what I want to see.”
“Now listen. When our young men, my brothers—especially my very dear brother Claude and his contemporaries, Rotherwood is the only one left—were at Oxford, they got raised into a higher atmosphere, and came home with beautiful plans and hopes for the Church, and drew us up with them; but now the University seems just an ordeal for faith to go through.”
“I should think there was less of outward temptation, but more of subtle trial. And then the whole system has altered since the times you are speaking of, when the old rules prevailed, and the great giants of Church renewal were there!” said Geraldine.
“You belong to the generation whom they trained, and who are now passing away. My father was one who grew up then.”
“We live on their spirit still.”
“I hope so. I never knew much about Cambridge till Clement went there, but it had the same influence on him. Indeed, all our home had that one thought ever since I can remember. Clement and Lance grew up in it.”
“But you will forgive me. These younger men either go very, very much further than we older ones dreamt of, or they have flaws in their faith, and sometimes—which is the strangest difficulty—the vehement observance and ritual with flaws beneath in their faith perhaps, or their loyalty—Socialist fancies.”
“There is impatience,” said Geraldine. “The Church progress has not conquered all the guilt and misery in the world.”
“Who said it would?”
“None of us; but these younger ones fancy it is the Church’s fault, instead of that of her members’ failures, and so they try to walk in the light of the sparks that they have kindled.”
“Altruism as they call it—love of the neighbour without love of God.”
“It may lead that way.”
“Does it?”
“Perhaps we are the impatient ones now,” said Geraldine, “in disliking the young ones’ experiments, and wanting to bind them to our own views.”
“Then you look on with toleration but with distrust.”
“Distrust of myself as well as of the young ones, and trying not to forget that ‘one good custom may corrupt the world,’ so it may be as well that the pendulum should swing.”
“The pendulum, but not its axis—faith!”
“No; and of my boy’s mainspring of faith I
do
feel sure, and of his real upright steadiness.”
Lady Merrifield asked no more, but could wait.
But is not each generation a terra incognita to the last? A question which those feel most decidedly who stand on the border-land of both, with love and sympathy divided between the old and the new, clinging to the one, and fearing to alienate the other.
CHAPTER XIV. – BUTTERFLY’S NECTAR
If you heed my warning
It will save you much.—A. A. PROCTOR.
Clement Underwood was so much better as to be arrived at taking solitary rides and walks, these suiting him better than having companions, as he liked to go his own pace, and preferred silence. His sister had become much engrossed with her painting, and saw likewise that in this matter of exercise it was better to let him go his own way, and he declared that this time of thought and reading was an immense help to him, restoring that balance of life which he seemed to himself to have lost in the whirl of duties at St. Matthew’s after Felix’s death.
The shore, with the fresh, monotonous plash of the waves, when the tide served, was his favourite resort. He could stand still and look out over the expanse of ripples, or wander on, as he pleased, watching the sea-gulls float along—
“As though life’s only call and care
Were graceful motion.”
There had been a somewhat noisy luncheon, for Edward Harewood, a midshipman in the Channel Fleet, which was hovering in the offing, had come over on a day’s leave with Horner, a messmate whose parents lived in the town. He was a big lad, a year older than Gerald, and as soon as a little awe of Uncle Clement and Aunt Cherry had worn off, he showed himself of the original Harewood type, directing himself chiefly to what he meant to be teasing Gerald about Vale Leston and Penbeacon.
“All the grouse there were on the bit of moor are snapped up.”
“Very likely,” said Gerald coolly.
“Those precious surveyors and engineers that Walsh brings down can give an account of them! As soon as you come of age, you’ll have to double your staff of keepers, I can tell you.”
“Guardians of ferae naturae,” said Gerald.
“I thought your father did all that was required in that line,” said Clement.
“Not since duffers and land-lubbers have been marauding over Penbeacon—aye, and elsewhere. What would you say to an engineer poaching away one of the august house of Vanderkist?”
“The awful cad! I’d soon show him what I thought of his cheek,” cried Adrian, with a flourish of his knife.
“Ha, ha! I bet that he will be shooting over Ironbeam Park long before you are of age.”
“I shall shoot him, then,” cried Adrian.
“Not improbably there will be nothing else to shoot by that time,” quietly said Gerald.
“I shall have a keeper in every lodge, and bring up four or five hundred pheasants every year,” boasted the little baronet, quite alive to the pride of possession, though he had never seen Ironbeam in his life.
Edward laughed a “Don’t you wish you may get it,” and the others, who knew very well the futility of the poor boy’s expectations, even if Gerald’s augury were not fulfilled, hastened to turn away the conversation to plans for the afternoon. Anna asked the visitor if he would ride out with her and Gerald to Clipstone or to the moor, and was relieved when he declined, saying he had promised to meet Horner.
“You will come in to tea at five?” said his aunt, “and bring him if you like.”
“Thanks awfully, but we hardly can. We have to start from the quay at six sharp.”
All had gone their several ways, and Clement, after the heat of the day, was pacing towards a secluded cove out of an inner bay which lay nearer than Anscombe Cove, but was not much frequented. However, he smelt tobacco, and heard sounds of boyish glee, and presently saw Adrian and Fergus Merrifield, bare-legged, digging in the mud.
“Ha! youngsters! Do you know the tide has turned? I thought you had had enough of that.”
“I thought I might find my aralia!” sighed Fergus. “The tide was almost as low.”
Just then there resounded from behind a projecting rock a peal of undesirable singing, a shout of laughter, and an oath, with—
“Holloa, those little beasts of teetotallers have hooked it.”
There were confused cries—“Haul ‘em back! Drench ‘em. Give ‘em a roll in the mud!” and Adrian shrank behind his uncle, taking hold of his coat, as there burst from behind the rock a party of boys, headed by the two cadets, all shouting loudly, till brought to a sudden standstill by the sight of “Parson! By Jove!” as the Horner mid muttered, taking out his pipe, while Edward Harewood mumbled something about “Horner’s brother’s tuck-out.” One or two other boys were picking up the remains of the feast, which had been on lobsters, jam tarts, clotted cream, and the like delicacies dear to the juvenile mind. The two biggest school-boys came forward, one voluble and thick of speech about Horner’s tuck-out, and “I assure you, sir, it is nothing—not a taste. Never thought of such—” Just then the other lad, staggering about, had almost lurched over into the deepening channel; but Clement caught him by the collar and held him fast, demanding in a low voice, very terrible to his hearers—
“Where does this poor boy live?”
It was Adrian who answered.
“Devereux Buildings.”
“You two, Adrian and Fergus, run to the quay and fetch a cab as near this place as it can come,” said Clement. “You little fellows, you had better run home at once. I hope you will take warning by the shame and disgrace of this spectacle.”
The boys were glad enough to disperse, being terrified by the condition of the prisoner, as well as by the detection; but the two who were encumbered with the baskets containing the bottles, jam-pots, and tin of cream remained, and so did the two young sailors, Horner saying civilly—
“You’ll not be hard on the kids, sir, for just a spree carried a little too far.”
“I certainly shall not be hard on the children, whom you seem to have tempted,” was the answer as they moved along; and as the younger Horner turned towards a little shop near the end of the steps to restore the goods, he asked—“Were you supplied from hence?”
“Yes,” said Horner, who was perhaps hardly sober enough for caution. “Mother Butterfly is a jolly old soul.”
Looking up. Clement saw no licence to sell spirituous liquors under the name of Sarah Schnetterling, tobacconist. The window had the placard ‘Ici on parle Francais’, and was adorned in a tasteful manner with ornamental pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. The bottles bore the labels of raspberry vinegar and lemonade, but he had seen too much not to say—
“You drive a dangerous trade.”
“Ah, sir, young people will be gourmands,” she said, with a foreign accent. “Ah, that poor young gentleman is very ill. Will he not come in and lie down to recover?”
“No, thank you,” said Clement. “A carriage is coming to take him home.”
Something about the fat in the fire was passing between the cadets, and the younger of them began to repeat that he had come for his brother’s birthday, and that he feared they had brought the youngsters into a scrape by carrying the joke too far.
“I have nothing to say to you, sir,” said the Vicar of St. Matthew’s, looking very majestic, “except that it is time you were returning to your ship. As to you,” turning to Edward Harewood, “I can only say that if you are aware of the peculiar circumstances of Adrian Vanderkist, your conduct can only be called fiendish.”
Fergus and Adrian came running up with tidings that the cab was waiting. Edward Harewood stood sullen, but the other lad said—
“Unlucky. We are sorry to have got the little fellows into trouble.”
He held out his hand, and Clement did not refuse it, as he did that of his own nephew. Still, there was a certain satisfaction at his heart as he beheld the clear, honest young faces of the other two boys, and he bade Adrian run home and wait for him, saying to Fergus—
“You seem to have been a good friend to my little nephew. Thank you.”
Fergus coloured up, speechless between pleasure at the warm tone of commendation and the obligations of school-boy honour, nor, with young Campbell on their hands, was there space for questions. That youth subsided into a heavy doze in the cab, and so continued till the arrival at No. 7, Devereux Buildings, where a capable-looking maid-servant opened the door, and he was deposited into her hands, the Vicar leaving his card with his present address, but feeling equal to nothing more, and hardly able to speak.
He drove home, finding his nephew in the doorway. Signing to the maid to pay the driver, and to the boy to follow him, he reached his study, and sank into his easy-chair, Adrian opening frightened eyes and saying—
“I’ll call Sibby.”
“No—that bottle—drop to there,” signing to the mark on the glass with his nail.
After a pause, while he held fast the boy, so to speak, with his eyes, he said—
“Thank you, dear lad.”
“Uncle Clement,” said Adrian then, “we weren’t doing anything. Merrifield thought his old bit of auralia, or whatever he calls it, was there.”
“I saw—I saw, my boy. To find you—as you were, made me most thankful. You must have resisted. Tell me, were you of this party, or did you come on them by accident?”
“Horner asked me,” said Adrian, twisting from one leg to another.
Clement saw the crisis was come which he had long expected, and rejoiced at the form it had taken, though he knew he should suffer from pursuing the subject.
“Adrian,” he said, “I am much pleased with you. I don’t want to get you into a row, but I should be much obliged if you would tell me how all this happened.”
“It wouldn’t,” returned Adrian, “but for that Ted and the other chap.”
“Do you mean that there would have been none of this—drinking—but for them? Don’t be afraid to tell me all. Was the stuff all got from that Mrs. Schnetter—?”
“Mother Butterfly’s? Oh yes. She keeps bottles of grog with those labels, and it is such a lark for her to be even