et how odd it was. "I
suppose, then," he said, "I was rather worse than _that_ when you took
me up and were good to me. What for, I wonder? and you were fond of me,
too, although you are fonder of _it_----"

"If you talk of It again I will never speak to you more," Lucy said, "as
if my beautiful boy was a thing and not a person. He is not It: he is
Tom, he is Mr. Randolph: that is what Williams calls him." Williams was
the butler who had been all over the world with Sir Tom, and who was
respectful of the heir, but a little impatient and surprised, as Jock
was, of the fuss that was made about Tommy for his own small sake.

By this time, however, Jock had recovered from his shyness--his
difficulty in talking, all the little mist that absence had made--and
roamed about after Lucy, hanging upon her, putting his arm through hers,
though he was much the taller, wherever she went. He held her back a
little now as they walked through the park in a sort of procession, Mrs.
Richens, the nurse, going first with the boy. "When I was a little
slobbering beast, like----" he stopped himself in time, "like the
t'other kind of baby, and nobody wanted me, you were the only one that
took any trouble."

"How do you know?" said Lucy; "you don't remember and I don't remember."

"Ah! but I remember the time in the Terrace, when I lay on the rug, and
heard papa making his will over my head. I was listening for you all the
time. I was thinking of nothing but your step coming to take me out."

"Nonsense!" said Lucy, "you were deep in your books, and thinking of
them only; of that--gentleman with the windmills--or Shakspeare, or some
other nonsense. Oh, I don't mean Shakspeare is nonsense. I mean you were
thinking of nothing but your books, and nobody would believe you
understood all that at your age."

"I did not understand," said Jock with a blush. "I was a little prig.
Lucy, how strange it all is, like a picture one has seen somewhere, or a
scene in a play or a dream! Sometimes I can remember little bits of it,
just as he used to read it out to old Ford. Bits of it are all in and
out of _As You Like It_, as if Touchstone had said them, or Jaques. Poor
old papa! how particular he was about it all. Are you doing everything
he told you, Lucy, in the will?"

He did not in the least mean it as an alarming question, as he stooped
over, in his awkward way holding her arm, and looked into her face.

CHAPTER V.

CONSULTATIONS.

Lucy