Armine really looked quite healthy, nothing remaining of his former ethereal air, but a certain expansiveness of brow and dreaminess of eye.

He greatly scrupled at halving the £15 when it was paid, but Barbara insisted that he must take his share, and he then said—-

“After all it does not signify, for we can do things together with it, as we have always done.”

“What things?”

“Well, I am afraid I do want a few books.”

“So do I, terribly.”

“And there are some Christmas gifts I want to send to Woodside.”

“Woodside! oh!”

“And wouldn’t it be pleasant to put the choir at the iron Church into surplices and cassocks for Christmas?”

“Oh, Armie, I do think we might have a little fun out of our own money.”

“What fun do you mean?” said Armine.

“I want to subscribe to Rolandi’s, and to take in the ‘Contemporary,’ and to have one real good Christmas party with tableaux vivants, and charades.  Mother says we can’t make it a mere surprise party, for people must have real food, and I think it would be more pleasure to all of us than presents and knicknacks.”

“Of course you can do it,” said Armine, rather disappointed.  “And if we had in Percy Stagg, and the pupil teachers, and the mission people—-”

“It would be awfully edifying and good-booky!  Oh yes, to be sure, nearly as good as hiding your little sooty shoe-blacks in surplices!  But, my dear Armie, I am so tired of edifying!  Why should I never have any fun?  Come, don’t look so dismal.  I’ll spare five shillings for a gown for old Betty Grey, and if there’s anything left out after the party, you shall have it for the surplices, and you’ll be Roland Graeme in my tableau?”

The next day Mother Carey found Armine with an elbow on each side of his book and his hands in his hair, looking so dreamily mournful that she apprehended a fresh attack of Petronella, but made her approaches warily.

“What have you there?” she asked.

“Dean Church’s lectures,” he said.

“Ah!  I want to make time to read them!  But why have they sent you into doleful dumps?”

“Not they,” said Armine; “but I wanted to read Babie a passage just now, and she said she had no notion of making Sundays of week days, and ran away.  It is not only that, mother, but what is the matter with Babie?  She is quite different.”

“Have you only just seen it?”

“No, I have felt something indefinable between us, though I never could bear to speak of it, ever since Bobus went.  Do you think he did her any harm?”

“A little, but not much.  Shall I tell you the truth, Armine; can you bear it?”

“What! did I disgust her when I was so selfish and discontented?”

“Not so much you, my boy, as the overdoing at Woodside!  I can venture to speak of it now, for I fancy you have got over the trance.”