The Long Vacation | Page 7

needs to be made to eat! Then the children want schooling of the
new-fashioned kinds."
All this had become possible through Fulbert's legacy between his
brothers and unmarried sister, resulting in about £4000 apiece; besides
which the firm had gone on prospering. Clement asked what was the
present circulation of the 'Pursuivant', and as Lance named it,
exclaimed—-
"What would old Froggatt have said, or even Felix?"
"It is his doing," said Lance, "the lines he traced out."
"My father says it is the writing with a conscience," said Gertrude.
"Yes, with life, faculty, and point, so as to hinder the conscience from
being a dead weight," added Geraldine.
"No wonder," said Lance, "with such contributors as the Harewoods,
and such a war-correspondent as Aubrey May."
Just then the door began to open, and a black silk personage
disconsolately exclaimed—-
"Master Clement! Master Clem! Wherever is the boy gone, when he
ought to be in his bed?"
"Ha, Sibby!" cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery,
withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse. "You see your baby has begun
to run alone."
"Ah, Master Lance, 'twas your doing. You always was the mischief."
"No indeed, Sibby, the long boy did it all by himself, before ever I was
in the house; but I'll bring him back again."
"May I not stay a little longer, Sibby," said Clement, rather piteously,
"to hear Lance sing? I have been looking forward to it all day."
"If ye'll take yer jelly, sir," said Sibby, "as it's fainting ye'll be, and
bringing our hearts into our mouths."
So Sibby administered her jelly, and heard histories of Lance's children,
then, after exacting a promise that Master Lance should only sing once,
she withdrew, as peremptory and almost as happy as in her once
crowded nursery.
"What shall that once be, Clem?" asked Lance.
"'Lead, kindly Light.'"
"Is it not too much?" he inquired, glancing towards his widowed sister.

"I want it as much as he does," she answered fervently.
At thirty-eight Lance's voice was, if possible, more perfect in sweetness,
purity, and expression than it had been at twenty, and never had the
poem, connected with all the crises of their joint lives, come more
home to their hearts, filling them with aspiration as well as memory.
Then Lance helped his brother up, and was surprised, after those
cheerful tones, to feel the weight so prone and feeble, that Gerald's
support on the other side was welcome. Mrs. Grinstead followed to
take Gertrude to her room and find her children's photographs.
The two young people began to smile as soon as they were left alone.
"Did you ever see Bexley?" asked Anna.
"Yes-—an awful hole," and both indulged in a merry laugh.
"My mother mentions it with pious horror," said Anna.
"Life is much more interesting when it is from hand to mouth," said
Gerald, with a yawn. "If I went in for sentiment, which I don't, it would
be for Fiddler's Ranch; though it is now a great city called Violinia,
with everything like everything else everywhere."
"Not Uncle Lance."
"Certainly not. For a man with that splendid talent to bury it behind a
counter, mitigated by a common church organ, is as remarkable as
absurd; though he seems to thrive on it. It is a treat to see such innocent
rapture, all genuine too!"
"You worn-out old man!" laughed Anna. "Aunt Cherry has always said
that self-abnegation is the secret of Uncle Lance's charm."
"All very well in that generation-—ces bons jours quand nous etions si
miserables," said Gerald, in his low, maundering voice. "Prosperity
means the lack of object."
"Does it?"
"In these days when everything is used up."
"Not to those two—-"
"Happy folk, never to lose the sense of achievement!"
"Poor old man! You talk as if you were twenty years older than Uncle
Lance."
"I sometimes think I am, and that I left my youth at Fiddler's Ranch."
Wherewith he strolled to the piano, and began to improvise something
so yearning and melancholy that Anna was not sorry when her uncle
came back and mentioned the tune the old cow died of.

Was Gerald, the orphan of Fiddler's Ranch, to be always the spoilt child
of prosperity and the creature of modern life, with more aspirations
than he saw how to fulfil, hampered as he was by duties, scruples, and
affections?

CHAPTER III
. DARBY AND JOAN

My reason haply more To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws! SHAKESPEARE.
Lancelot saw his brother's doctors the next morning, and communicated
to his wife the upshot of the interview when they were driving to their
meeting in Mrs. Grinstead's victoria, each adorned with a big bunch of
primroses.
"Two doctors!