Aprils Lady | Page 3

To Sir George! To your father!" cries his wife, hotly and quick, and----
"Freddy!" from his sister-in-law brings him to a full stop for a moment.
"Do you mean to tell me," says he, thus brought to bay, "that you have nothing to thank Sir George for?" He is addressing his wife.
"Nothing, nothing!" declares she, vehemently, the remembrance of that last letter from her husband's father, that still lies within reach of her view, lending a suspicion of passion to her voice.
"Oh, my dear girl, consider!" says Mr. Monkton, lively reproach in his tone. "Has he not given you me, the best husband in Europe?"
"Ah, what it is to be modest," says Joyce, with her little quick brilliant laugh.
"Well, it's not true," says Mrs. Monkton, who has laughed also, in spite of herself and the soreness at her heart. "He did not give you to me. You made me that gift of your own free will. I have, as I said before, nothing to thank him for."
"I always think he must be a silly old man," says Joyce, which seems to put a fitting termination to the conversation.
The silence that ensues annoys Tommy, who dearly loves to hear the human voice divine. As expressed by himself first, but if that be impracticable, well, then by somebody else. Anything is better than dull silence.
"Is he that?" asks he, eagerly, of his aunt.
Though I speak of her as his aunt, I hope it will not be misunderstood for a moment that Tommy totally declines to regard her in any reverential light whatsoever. A playmate, a close friend, a confidante, a useful sort of person, if you will, but certainly not an aunt, in the general acceptation of that term. From the very first year that speech fell on them, both Mabel and he had refused to regard Miss Kavanagh as anything but a confederate in all their scrapes, a friend to rejoice with in all their triumphs; she had never been aunt, never, indeed, even so much as the milder "auntie" to them; she had been "Joyce," only, from the very commencement of their acquaintance. The united commands of both father and mother (feebly enforced) had been insufficient to compel them to address this most charming specimen of girlhood by any grown up title. To them their aunt was just such an one as themselves--only, perhaps, a little more so.
A lovely creature, at all events, and lovable as lovely. A little inconsequent, perhaps at times, but always amenable to reason, when put into a corner, and full of the glad, laughter of youth.
"Is he what?" says she, now returning Tommy's eager gaze.
"The best husband in Europe. He says he's that," with a doubtful stare at his father.
"Why, the very best, of course," says Joyce, nodding emphatically. "Always remember that, Tommy. It's a good thing to be, you know. You'll want to be that, won't you?"
But if she has hoped to make a successful appeal to Tommy's noble qualities (hitherto, it must be confessed, carefully kept hidden), she finds herself greatly mistaken.
"No, I won't," says that truculent person distinctly. "I want to be a big general with a cocked hat, and to kill people. I don't want to be a husband at all. What's the good of that?"
"To pursue the object would be to court defeat," says Mr. Monkton meekly. He rises from the table, and, seeing him move, his wife rises too.
"You are going to your study?" asks she, a little anxiously. He is about to say "no" to this, but a glance at her face checks him.
"Yes, come with me," says he instead, answering the lovely silent appeal in her eyes. That letter has no doubt distressed her. She will be happier when she has talked it over with him--they two alone. "As for you, Thomas," says his father, "I'm quite aware that you ought to be consigned to the Donjon keep after your late behavior, but as we don't keep one on the premises, I let you off this time. Meanwhile I haste to my study to pen, with the assistance of your enraged mother, a letter to our landlord that will induce him to add one on at once to this building. After which we shall be able to incarcerate you at our pleasure (but not at yours) on any and every hour of the day."
"Who's Don John?" asks Tommy, totally unimpressed, but filled with lively memories of those Spaniards and other foreign powers who have unkindly made more difficult his hateful lessons off and on.
CHAPTER II.
"No love lost between us."
"Well," says Mr. Monkton, turning to his wife as the study (a rather nondescript place) is reached. He has closed the door, and is now looking at her with a distinctly quizzical light in his eyes and in the smile that