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It had struck him, even before it struck Lionel, that, if turned out of Verner's Pride, Lionel would want a home; want it in the broadest acceptation of the word. It would have been Jan's delight to give him one. He, Jan, went home, told Miss Deb the news that it was John Massingbird who had returned, not Frederick, and imparted his views of future arrangements. Miss Deb was dubious. For Mr.
That gentleman was in the study. Its large desk, a whole mass of papers crowded above it and underneath it, pushed into the remotest corner. Lionel had left things connected with the estate as straight as he could. He wished to explain affairs to John Massingbird, and hand over documents and all else in due form, but he was not allowed. Business and John had never agreed.
Eyre, Luke started off there and then, to retrace his steps to John Massingbird. John was nearly well then, and they returned at once to the diggings. In his careless way, he said the loss must be given up for a bad job; they should never find the fellows, and the best plan was to pick up more gold to replace that gone. Luke informed him he had written home to announce his death.
"It saves him the trouble of a refusal. I don't think any ball would get John Massingbird to it; unless he could be received in what he calls his diggings' toggery." "I'd not have gone with him; I don't like him well enough," resentfully spoke Sibylla; "but as he is not going, he can let me have the loan of my own carriage at least, the carriage that was my own. I dislike those old, hired things."
Her voyage out, her residence in that very unconventional place, Melbourne, the waves and storms which had gone over her there in more ways than one, the voyage back again alone, all had tended to give Sibylla Massingbird an independence of thought; a contempt for the rules and regulations, the little points of etiquette obtaining in civilised society.
Luke, despised by Rachel, whom he truly loved, clearly seeing there was no hope whatever that she would ever favour him, was eager to get away from Deerham anywhere, so that he might forget her. John Massingbird knew this; he liked Luke, and he thought Luke might prove useful to him in the land to which he was emigrating, so he proposed to him to join in the scheme. Luke warmly embraced it.
Bitter aggravation lay in her tone, bitter aggravation in her gesture. Was Lionel tempted to forget himself? to set her right? If so, he beat the temptation down. All men would not have been so forbearing. "Sibylla, I have told you truth," he simply said. "Which is as much as to say that Fred told " she was vehemently beginning when the words were stopped by the entrance of John Massingbird.
There was so much explanation to ask and to be given, that Jan was somewhat hindered on his way to Hook's. "I can't stop," said he, in the midst of a long sentence of John's. "Alice Hook may be dying. Will you remain here until I come back?" "If you are not long," responded John Massingbird. "I intend this to be the last night of my concealment, and I want to go about, terrifying the natives.
It is not Fred Massingbird, Lionel; he is dead, safe enough; but it is somebody from a distance; one who will cause you little less trouble. Not any less, in fact, putting Sibylla out of the question." Lionel stopped in his walk they were pacing the terrace and looked at Jan with some surprise; a smile, in his new security, lightening his face.
The doctor looked taller, and stouter, and redder than ever, and as he leaned thoughtfully forward, and the crimson blaze played upon his face, Jan thought how like he was growing to his sister, the late Mrs. Verner. "Mr. Jan," said the doctor, "it is not right that my nephew, John Massingbird, should enjoy Verner's Pride." "Of course it's not," answered Jan.
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