The Rector assumed an air of superior discretion, to which he usually treated his women-folk when he thought fit to consider that they were touching on matters beyond their jurisdiction.
"Some more tea, please, mother," put in Dora appropriately. "Excuse my appetite. I suppose it is the autumn air."
There was a short silence, during which Mrs. Glynde sought to propitiate her angered spouse with sodden toast and a second brew of tea.
"I always said," observed the Rector at last, "that your cousin was a fool."
And in some indefinite way Mrs. Glynde felt that she was once more responsible.
Shall I forget on this side of the grave? I promise nothing; you must wait and see.
From the train arriving at East Burgen station at eight o'clock that same evening there alighted a youth who seemed suddenly to have taken manhood upon his shoulders. He stood on the platform and pointed out to a porter, who called him Master James, a large Gladstone bag and a new sword-case.
Although he could have carried the luggage under one arm and the porter under the other, he carefully refrained from offering to convey anything except his own walking-stick. Such is the force of education. This boy had been brought up to expect service. He was to be served all his life, and so the sword-case had to be left to the porter whom he envied.
During the journey down--between the farthest-removed stations--the sword had flashed more than once in the dim light of the carriage lamp. Ah! those first swords! Not Toledo nor Damascus can produce their equal in after years.
The porter, honest father of two private soldiers of the line himself, saw it all--at once. He carried the sword-case with an exaggerated reverence and forbore from remark just then. Afterwards, beneath the station-lamp, he looked at the shilling--the first of its kind from that quarter--with a pathetic, meaning smile.
It was Saturday night. The streets of East Burgen were rather crowded, and Jem Agar--with elbows well in and the whip at the regulation angle across old Lasher's face, who could not help squinting at the pendant thong--shouted to the country-folk in a new voice of mighty deep register.
He carried his boyish head stiffly, and had for ever discarded a turn-down collar. At first he kept old Lasher at a respectful distance, asking in a somewhat curt and business-like manner after the stables. Then gradually, as they bowled along the country road in the familiar hush of an April evening, he thawed, and proceeded to vouchsafe to that steady coachman a series of very interesting details of military matters in general and the Indian army in particular.