The captain came alone. He walked in from the inn just before luncheon, with a wearied, sad look about him, as if he had suffered a good deal; he spoke quietly and slowly, and when the children came in, he took them up in his arms and kissed them very tenderly. Lucilla submitted more placably than Honor expected, but the moment they were set down they sprang to their friend, and held by her dress. Then came the meal, which passed off with small efforts at making talk, but with nothing memorable except the captain’s exclamation at the end—‘Well, that’s the first time I ever dined with you children without a fuss about the meat. Why, Cilly, I hardly know you.’
‘I think the appetites are better for the sea air,’ said Honor, not that she did not think it a great achievement.
‘I’m afraid it has been a troublesome charge,’ said the captain, laying his hand on his niece’s shoulder, which she at once removed, as disavowing his right in her.
‘Oh! it has made me so happy,’ said Honor, hardly trusting her voice; ‘I don’t know how to yield it up.’
Those understanding eyes of Lucilla’s were drinking in each word, but Uncle Kit ruthlessly said—‘There, it’s your walking time, children; you go out now.’
Honora followed up his words with her orders, and Lucille obeyed, only casting another wistful look, as if she knew her fate hung in the scales. It was showing tact such as could hardly have been expected from the little impetuous termagant, and was the best pleading for her cause, for her uncle’s first observation was—‘A wonder! Six months back, there would have been an explosion!’
‘I am glad you think them improved.’
‘Civilized beings, not plagues. You have been very good to them;’ and as she intimated her own pleasure in them, he continued—‘It will be better for them at Castle Blanch to have been a little broken in; the change from his indulgence would have been terrible.’
‘If it were possible to leave them with me, I should be so happy,’ at length gasped Honora, meeting an inquiring dart from the captain’s eyes, as he only made an interrogative sound as though to give himself time to think, and she proceeded it broken sentences—‘If their uncle and aunt did not so very much wish for them—perhaps—I could—’
‘Well,’ said Captain Charteris, apparently so little aided by his thoughts as to see no hope of overcoming his perplexity without expressing it, ‘the truth is that, though I had not meant to say anything of it, for I think relations should come first, I believe poor Sandbrook would have preferred it.’ And while her colour deepened, and she locked her trembling fingers together to keep them still, he went on. ‘Yes! you can’t think how often I called myself a dozen fools for having parted him from his children! Never held up his head again! I could get him to take interest in nothing—every child he saw he was only comparing to one or other of them. After the year turned, and he talked of coming home, he was more cheerful; but strangely enough, for those last days at Hyères, though he seemed better, his spirits sank unaccountably, and he would talk more of the poor little thing that he lost than of these! Then he had a letter from you which set him sighing, and wishing they could always have such care! Altogether, I thought to divert him by taking him on that expedition, but— Well, I’ve been provoked with him many a time, but there was more of the real thing in him than in the rest of us, and I feel as if the best part of our family were gone.’
‘And this was all? He was too ill to say much afterwards?’
‘Couldn’t speak when he rang in the morning! Was gone by that time next day. Now,’ added the captain, after a silence, ‘I tell you candidly that my feeling is that the ordinary course is right. I think Charles ought to take the children, and the children ought to be with Charles.’
‘If you think so,’ began Honor, with failing hopes.
‘At the same time,’ continued he, ‘I don’t think they’ll be so happy or so well cared for as by you, and knowing poor Owen’s wishes, I should not feel justified in taking them away, since you are so good as to offer to keep them.’
Honor eagerly declared herself much obliged, then thought it sounded ironical.
‘Unless,’ he proceeded, ‘Charles should strongly feel it his duty to take them home, in which case—’
‘Oh, of course I could say nothing.’
‘Very well, then we’ll leave it to his decision.’
So it remained, and in trembling Honora awaited the answer.
It was in her favour that he was appointed to a ship, since he was thus excluded from exercising any supervision over them at Castle Blanch, and shortly after, letters arrived gratefully acceding to her request. Family arrangements and an intended journey made her proposal doubly welcome, for the present at least, and Mrs. Charteris was full of polite thanks.
Poor little waifs and strays! No one else wanted them, but with her at least they had a haven of refuge, and she loved them the more ardently for their forlorn condition. Her own as they had never before been! and if the tenure were uncertain, she prized it doubly, even though, by a strange fatality, she had never had so much trouble and vexation with them as arose at once on their being made over to her! When all was settled, doubt over, and the routine life begun, Lucilla evidently felt the blank of her vanished hopes, and became fretful and captious, weary of things in general, and without sufficient motive to control her natural taste for the variety of naughtiness! Honor had not undertaken the easiest of tasks, but she neither shrank from her enterprise nor ceased to love the fiery little flighty sprite, the pleasing torment of her life—she loved her only less than that model of childish sweetness, her little Owen.
* * * * *
‘Lucy, dear child, don’t take your brother there. Owen dear, come back, don’t you see the mud? you’ll sink in.’
‘I’m only getting a dear little crab, Sweet Honey,’ and the four little feet went deeper and deeper into the black mud.
‘I can’t have it done! come back, children, I desire, directly.’
The boy would have turned, but his sister had hold of his hand. ‘Owen, there he is! I’ll have him,’ and as the crab scuttled sidelong after the retreating tide, on plunged the children.
‘Lucy, come here!’ cried the unfortunate old hen, as her ducklings took to the black amphibious mass, but not a whit did Lucilla heed. In the ardour of the chase, on she went, unheeding, leaving her brother sticking half way, where having once stopped, he began to find it difficult to withdraw his feet, and fairly screamed to ‘Sweet Honey’ for help. His progress was not beyond what a few long vigorous steps of hers could come up with, but deeply and blackly did she sink, and when she had lifted her truant out of his two holes, the increased weight made her go ankle deep at the first tread, and just at the same moment a loud shriek proclaimed that Lucilla, in hey final assault on the crab, had fallen flat on a yielding surface, where each effort to rise sank her deeper, and Honora almost was expecting in her distress to see her disappear altogether, ere the treacherous mud would allow her to come to the rescue. But in that instant of utmost need, ere she could set down the little boy, a gentleman, with long-legged strides, had crossed the intervening space, and was bearing back the young lady from her mud bath. She raised her eyes to thank him. ‘Humfrey!’ she exclaimed.
‘Honor! so it was you, was it? I’d no notion of it!’ as he placed on her feet the little maiden, encrusted with mud from head to foot, while the rest of the party were all apparently cased in dark buskins of the same.
‘Come to see me and my children?’ she said. ‘I am ashamed you should find us under such circumstances! though I don’t know what would have become of us otherwise. No, Lucy, you are too disobedient for any one to take notice of you yet—you must go straight home, and