have my own way."

"Don't you have your own way?" said Jock, opening his eyes. "Lucy, who
contradicts you? I should like to know who it was, and tell him my mind
a bit. I thought you did whatever you pleased. Do you mean to say there
is any truth in all that about Sir Tom?"

"In what about Sir Tom?" cried Lucy, instantly on her defence; and then
she changed her tone with a little laugh. "Of course I do whatever I
please. It is not good for anybody, Jock. Don't you know we must be
crossed sometimes, or we should never do any good at all?"

"Now I wonder which she means?" said Jock. "If she does have her own way
or if she don't? I begin to think you speak something else than English,
Lucy. I know it is the thing to say that women must do what their
husbands tell them; but do you mean that it's true like _that_? and that
a fellow may order you to do this or not to do that, with what is your
own and not his at all?"

"I don't think I understand you, dear," said Lucy sweetly.

"Oh! you can't be such a stupid as that," said the boy; "you understand
right enough. What did he mean by talking it over with Sir Tom? He
thought Sir Tom would put a stop to it, Lucy."

"If Mr. Rushton forms such false ideas, dear, what does it matter? That
is not of any consequence either to you or me."

"I wish you would give me a plain answer," said Jock, impatiently. "I
ask you one thing, and you say another; you never give me any
satisfaction."

She smiled upon him with a look which, clever as Jock was, he did not
understand. "Isn't that conversation?" she said.

"Conversation!" The boy repeated the word almost with a shriek of
disdain: "You don't know very much about that, down here in the country,
Lucy. You should hear MTutor; when he's got two or three fellows from
Cambridge with him, and they go at it! That's something like talk."

"It is very nice for you, Jock, that you get on so well with Mr.
Derwentwater," said Lucy, catching with some eagerness at this way of
escape from embarrassing questions. "I hope he will come and see us at
Easter, as he promised."

"He may," said Jock, with great gravity, "but the thing is, everybody
wants to have him; and then, you see, whenever he has an opportunity he
likes to go abroad. He says it freshens one up more than anything. After
working his brain all the half, as he does, and taking the interest he
does in everything, he has got to pay attention, you know, and not to
overdo it; he must h