“Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing,
       Onward, the sailors cry. 
     Carry the lad that’s born to be king
       Over the sea to Skye.”

“But Roger is not a king!” said Gerald, with a queer little break in his voice.  “He is only a codger!”

CHAPTER XIV.

Roger the codger.

“Miranda!” said Roger.

“Yes, my dear brother!”

“Tum te-tiddle-de-tum, tum, tum, tum!”

“Yes, my dear brother.”

“I—­oh, I beg your pardon; that isn’t what I meant to say, of course.  A—­the moon is in perigee now, you know.”

“Roger,” said his sister-in-law, looking up from her sewing, “you know there is no earthly use in saying that kind of thing to me.  ‘Perigee’ suggests nothing to me but periwig, and it is painful to think of the moon in so unbecoming a head-gear.  Are you quite sure that that was what you were going to say?”

Roger laughed, looked a little confused, and threw stones into the water; Mrs. Merryweather sewed on buttons and waited.

“I shall be twenty-five next week,” was the professor’s next remark.  “I—­a—­I am getting to be quite an old fogy.”

“Your teeth and digestion are still good,” said his sister-in-law, with provoking composure; “and you are able—­generally speaking—­ to get about without a stick.”

“Pshaw!” said Roger.  He laughed again, and threw out his powerful arms.  He was lying at full length on the verandah, his handsome head propped against one of the pillars, framed in a mass of woodbine and trumpet-vine.  Mrs. Merryweather looked at him, and thought that with the exception of her Miles and her boys, she had never seen a finer-looking fellow.  Every line of the lithe, elastic figure was instinct with power; the face, from the broad upright brow to the firm chin, was alight with thought and intelligence.  But the blue eyes, usually so clear in their grave gaze, held a shadow to-day, a curious look of shyness, one might almost say shamefacedness.  Mrs. Merryweather gazed at him, and thought her own thoughts, but she knew her husband’s family, and held her peace.

“That is a very lovely girl, Miranda!” was the Professor’s next remark.

“Meaning Gertrude—?” said this wicked woman, innocently.

“Oh,—­I mean Hilda, of course!  She is remarkably intelligent, don’t you think so?”

Mrs. Merryweather assented warmly, and added praises of her own.  Hildegarde’s little ears would surely have burned if she could have heard the good lady.  As for Roger, he listened with great complacency.

“Yes!” he said.  “She is sympathetic, and unselfish,—­remarkably so, it seems to me; and—­and she takes an interest in things,—­I mean real things, such, as girls usually care nothing about.”

“Perigees, for example,” said his sister-in-law.

“Well,” said Roger, laughing, “yes, I suppose I do mean perigees, and that kind of thing.  They are not in your line, Miranda, I know.”