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"And I'm sure," said Aunt Christie, when she heard he was coming, "I should never care about the mischief he leads the little ones into when he's well, if he could breathe like other people when he's ill; you may hear him half over the house when he has his asthma." Crayshaw came by the express train in the afternoon, and was met by the young Mortimers in the close carriage.
"I'm sure I don't know what A.J. Mortimer could see of a military nature in that tender incident," said Crayshaw, with great mildness. "I did not expect, after our long friendship, to have a Latin verse written upon me, and called 'The Blunderbuss." Crayshaw had grown into a handsome young fellow, and looked old for his years, and manly, though he was short.
Valentine was very well pleased the next afternoon to find himself sitting among a posse of young Mortimers and Crayshaw, under the great pear and apple trees, the latter just coming out to join their blossom to that of their more forward neighbours. It was his nature to laugh and make laugh, and his character to love youth, his own being peculiarly youthful.
"There's a portrait of Lord Palmerston," whispered Crayshaw, "he has a map of Belgium pasted on his breast. He says, 'I, Pam, managed this." "Yes, that means the date of the independence of Belgium," said Gladys. "Johnnie made it, but father says it is not quite fair." "The best ones," Johnnie explained, "ought not to have any extra word, and should tell you what they mean themselves.
Crayshaw long before it overtook him, as it is apt to disturb scoundrels who keep a hypocritical good name above their hidden misdeeds. As it happened, at the very time Jem and I ran away from him, Mr. Crayshaw himself was living in terror of one or two revelations, and to be deserted by two of his most respectably connected boys was an ill-timed misfortune.
At the stepping-stones over the brook, Emily parted with the young people, receiving from Crayshaw the verses he had copied. "Gladys had possessed them for a week, and liked them," said the young poet. "I meant one of them for a parody, but Mr. Mortimer said it was not half enough like for parody, it only amounted to a kind of honest plagiarism."
He added, however, that he should request Mr. Crayshaw, as a personal favour, that I should receive no punishment for running away, as I had suffered sufficiently already. We had told very little of the true history of Crayshaw's before Jem fainted, and I felt no disposition to further confidences.
On that occasion, however, the fact was certainly present to his thought; "But," he cogitated, "we had no quarrels. A man may sometimes do with but little love from his wife, if he is quite sure she loves no other man more." He started from his reverie as Crayshaw ceased to speak. "I thought you had more sense," he said, with the smile still on his mouth that had come while he mused on Emily.
"Most impertinent of Swan," he heard the former say, to be arguing thus about political affairs in the presence of the children. And what Mr. Mortimer can be thinking of, inviting young Crayshaw to stay so much with them, I cannot imagine. We shall be having them turn republican next."
Pray, are you allowed, in consideration of your nationality, to whittle in Harrow School?" This was said by way of a reproof for the state of the floor. "Wall," began Crayshaw, to cover the almost audible titters of the girls; but, distracted by this from the matter in hand, he coughed, went on whittling, and held his peace.
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