young
gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours,
and become used to all ranks; but when it came to witnessing an actual
skirmish when she was responsible for Fanny's sons, it was needful to
interfere, and in equal dismay and indignation she came round the point.
The light artillery fled at her aspect, and she had to catch Francis's
arm in the act of discharging after them a cuttlefish's white spine,
with a sharp "For shame, they are running away! Conrade, Zack, have
done!" Zack was one of her own scholars, and held her in respect.

He desisted at once, and with a touch of his rough forelock,
looked sheepish, and said, "Please ma'am, he was meddling with our
lobster-pot."

"I wasn't doing any harm," said Conrade. "I was just looking in, and
they all came and shied stones at us."

"I don't care how the quarrel began," said Rachel. "You would not have
run into it if you had been behaving properly. Zack was quite right to
protect his father's property, but he might have been more civil. Now
shake hands, and have done with it."

"Not shake hands with a low boy," growled Francis. But happily Conrade
was of a freer spirit, and in spite of Rachel's interference, had sense
enough to know himself in the wrong. He held out his hand, and when the
ceremony had been gone through, put his hands in his pockets, produced
a shilling, and said, "There, that's in case I did the thing any harm."
Rachel would have preferred Zachary's being above its acceptance, but
he was not, and she was thankful that a wood path offend itself, leading
through the Homestead plantations away from the temptations and perils
of the shore.

That the two boys, instead of listening to her remonstrance, took to
punching and kicking one another, was a mitigated form of evil for
which she willingly compounded, having gone through so much useless
interference already, that she felt as if she had no spirit left to
keep the peace, and that they must settle their little affairs between
themselves. It was the most innocent diversion in which she could hope
to see them indulge. She only desired that it might last them past a
thrush's nest, in the hedge between the park and plantation, a somewhat
treasured discovery of Grace's. No such good luck. Either the thrush's
imprudence or Grace's visits had made the nest dangerously visible,
and it was proclaimed with a shout. Rachel, in hot haste, warned them
against taking birds'-nests in general,