"Certainly not Allen," said Caroline with a sigh. "And as to Bobus, he would have full capacity; but a great change must come over him, poor fellow, before he would fulfil your father's conditions."
"He has no notion of the drudgery of the medical profession," said Janet; "he means to read law, get up social and sanitary questions, and go into parliament."
"I know," said her mother, "I have always lived in hopes that sanitary theories would give him his father's heart for the sufferers, and that search into the secrets of nature would lead him higher; but as long as he does not turn that way of himself it would be contrary to your father's charge to hold this discovery out to him as an inducement."
"And Jock?" said Janet, smiling. "You don't expect it of the born soldier-nor of Armine?"
"I am not sure about Armine, though he may not be strong enough to bear the application."
"Armine will walk through life like Allen," scornfully said Janet; "besides he is but fourteen. Now, mother, why should not I be worthy?"
"My dear Janet, it is not a question of worthiness; it is not a thing a woman could work out."
"I do not ask you to give it to me now, nor even to promise it to me," said Janet, with a light in those dark wells, her eyes; "but only to let me have the hope, that when in three years' time I am qualified, and have passed the examinations, if Bobus does not take it up, you will let me claim that best inheritance my father left, but which his sons do not heed."
"My child, you do not know what you ask. Remember, I know more about it than only what you picked up on that morning. It is a matter he could not have made sure of without a succession of experiments very hard even for him, and certainly quite impossible for any woman. The exceeding difficulty and danger of the proof was one reason of his guarding it so much, and desiring it should only be told to one good as well as clever-clever as well as good."
"Can you give me no hint of the kind of thing," said Janet, wistfully.
"That would be a betrayal of his trust."
Janet looked terribly disappointed.
"Mother," said she, "let me put it to you. Is it fair to shut up a discovery that might benefit so many people."
"It is not his fault, Janet, that it is shut up. He talked of it to several of the most able men he was connected with, and they thought it a chimera. He could not carry it on far enough to convince them. I do not know what he would have done if his illness had been longer, or he could have talked it out with any one, but I know the proof could only be made out by a course of experiments which he could not commit to any one not highly qualified, or whom he could not entirely trust. It is not a thing to be set forth broadcast, while it might yet prove a fallacy."
"Is it to be lost for ever, then?"
"I shall try to find light as to the right thing to be done about it."
"Well," said Janet, drawing a long breath, "three years of study must come, any way, and by that time I may be able to triumph over prejudice."
There was no time to reply, for at that moment the letters of the second delivery were brought in; and the first that Caroline opened told her that the cold which Armine had mentioned on Saturday seemed to be developing into an attack of a rather severe hybrid kind of illness, between measles and scarlatina, from which many persons had lately been suffering.
Armine was never strong, and his illnesses were always a greater anxiety than those of other people, so that his mother came to the immediate decision of going to Eton that same afternoon and remaining there, unless she found that it had been a false alarm.
She did not find it so; and as she remained with her boy, Janet's conversation with her could not be resumed. There was so much chance of infection that she could not see any of the family again. Both the Johns sickened as soon as Armine began to improve, and Miss Ogilvie took the three girls down to Belforest. After the first few days it was rather a pleasant nursing. There was never any real alarm; indeed, Armine was the least ill of the three, and Johnny the most, and each boy was perfectly delighted to have her to attend to him, her nephew almost touchingly grateful. The only other victim was Jock's most intimate friend, Cecil Evelyn, whose fag Armine was. He became a sharer of her attentions and the amusements she provided. She received letters of grateful thanks from his mother, who was, like herself, a widow, but was prevented from coming to him by close attendance on her mother-in-law, who was in a lingering state of decay when every day might be the last.
The eldest son, Lord Fordham, was so delicate that he was on no account to be exposed to the infection, and the boys were exceedingly anxious that Cecil should join them in the expedition that their mother projected making with them, to air them in Switzerland before returning to the rest of the family. But Mrs. Evelyn (her husband had not lived to come to the title) declined this. Fordham was in the country with his tutor, and she wished Cecil to come and spend his quarantine with her in London before joining him. The boys grumbled very much, but Caroline could hardly wonder when she talked with their tutor.
He, like every one else, liked, and even loved personally that perplexing subject, John Lucas Brownlow, alias Jock. The boy was too generous, honourable, truthful, and kindly to be exposed to the stigma of removal; but he was the perplexity of everybody. He could not be convinced of any necessity for application, and considered a flogging as a slight risk quite worth encountering for the sake of diversion. He would execute the most audacious pranks, and if he was caught, would take it as a trial of skill between the masters and himself, and accept punishment as amends, with the most good humoured grace in the world. Fun seemed to be his only moving spring, and he led everybody along with him, so as to be a much more mischievous person than many a worse lad.
The only exceptions in the house to his influence seemed to be his brother and cousin. Both were far above the average boy. Armine, for talent, John Friar Brownlow at once for industry and steadiness. They had stood out resolutely against more than one of his pranks, and had been the only boys in the house not present on the occasion of his last freak-a champagne supper, when parodies had been sung, caricaturing all the authorities; and when the company had become uproarious enough to rouse the whole family, the boys were discovered in the midst of the most audacious but droll mimicry of the masters.
As to work, Jock was developing the utmost faculties for leaving it undone, trusting to his native facility for putting on the steam at any crisis; and not believing in the warnings that he would fail in passing for the army.
What was to be done with him? Was he to be taken away and sent to a tutor? His mother consulted himself as he sat in his arm-chair.
"Like Rob!" he said, and made up a face.
"Rob is doing very well in the militia."
"No; don't do that, mother! Never fear, I'll put on a spurt when the time comes!"
"I don't believe a spurt will do. Now, seriously, Jock-"
"Don't say, seriously, mother: it's like H.S.H."
"Perhaps if I had been like her, you would not be vexing me so much now."
"Come, come, mother, it's nothing to be vexed about. My tutor needn't have bothered you. I've done nothing sneaking nor ungentlemanly."
"There is plenty of wrong without that, Jock. While you never heed anything but fun and amusement I do not see how you are to come to anything worth having; and you will soon get betrayed into something unworthy. Don't let me have to take you away in disgrace, my boy; it would break my heart."
"You shan't have to do that, mother."
"But don't you think it would be wiser to be somewhere with fewer inducements to idleness?"
"Leave Eton? O no, mother! I can't do that till the last day possible. I shall be in the eight another year."