The Golden Age

atching the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning schemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of the jocund piano declared that the Olympians we

d’s mind, for he presently remarked, à propos of nothing whatever that had

9

quite old,’ I said. (She must have

rd scornfully. ‘It’s not her, it

had any money,’ I

y brother with confide

red itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,—in a grown-up man and a good cricketer, for instance, even as this curate; Edwar

rd in due course, ‘that there was

oning?’ I a

a thing they do, you know. And he used to carry notes and message

of ’em?’ I inno

got him out of rows, and told stories for him when he needed it—and much better ones than he could have made up for himsel

that’s got to do

week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever, the silly young ass. So when the week was up, and he was being[96] dunned for the shilling, he went off to the fellow and said: “Your broken-hearte

k? I don’t know

saw he had made a slip, through trusting too much to the rot

aid, ‘the Royal Oak’s a

ather’s paddock. It happens to be an elm, but she wouldn’t know the difference. All right: say I’ll be there.” B

9

’ I inquired, ‘when he got to

re not leave the house. My cruel parents immure me closely. If you only knew what I suffer. Your broken-hearted Bella.” Out of the same rotten book.

hat got to——’

r a liar, so Bobby escaped for the time. But when he was in a hole next week, over a stiff French exercise, and tried the same sort of game on his sis

9

he two—the fellow and the si

packed off to school a whole year earlier than his people meant to send hi

nd the new curate strolled out on the grass below us, and took the direction of a garden-seat which was backed by a dense laurel shrubbery reaching round in a half-circle to the house. Edw

I said; ‘it seems

‘he’s the youngest, and he

9

mple enough. A porch of iron trellis came up to within easy reach of the window, and was habitually used by all three of us, when modestly anxious to avoid public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch like a white rat, and his night-gown glimmered a moment on the

a white evening frock, looking—for an aunt—really quite nice. On the lawn stood an incensed curate, grasping our small brother by a large ear, which—judging from the row he was making—seemed on the point of parting company with the head it completed and adorned. The gruesome noise he was emitting did not really affect us otherwise than ?sthetical

’ shrilled Harold, ‘and I’l

eleasing him, ‘now go ahead, and

ving; but even we had hardly[101] given Harold due credi

t of the window, and on the lawn I saw a sight which froze the marrow in my veins! A burglar was approa

yle, though unlike Harold’s nativ

aid the cu

e. Instantly the signal was responded to, and from the adjacent shadows t

said the cura

rious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones. His expression w

1

the curate rudely; ‘there’s too much jaw ab

and, ‘but just then the drawing-room window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out—I m

ight really have seen something. How was the poor man to know—though the chaste and lofty diction might have suppli

ot alarm the h

arold sweetly, ‘that p’rap

here, you naughty little

essed—by his own f

1

old gave one startled glance around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back-door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The curate faced

a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat,[104] when hard pressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat—somewhat unwillingly—was filling the title r?le; and it had p

by. Some days later, however, when he had dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the last p

day; and it was always a comparatively easy matter to