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He dropped a Greek word absently, putting away his papers the while, and thinking of the subject with which he had just been busy. Constance opened the door again to make her escape, but the sound recalled Dr. Ewen's thoughts. "My dear has your aunt asked you? We hope you'll come with us to the Vice-Chancellor's party to-night. I think it would interest you.
So far from Ewen's "position" being of any advantage to Connie, it was Connie who seemed likely to bring the Hoopers into circles of Oxford society where they had till now possessed but the slenderest footing. An invitation to dinner from the Provost of Winton and Mrs. Manson, to "Dr. and Mrs. Hooper, Miss Hooper and Lady Constance Bledlow," to meet an archbishop, had fairly taken Mrs.
"Annette shall take it," she thought, "first thing. Oh, what a row there'll be!" And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed. And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen's affairs. Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming inhabitants.
She was Ewen's blood not hers; and the mother's jealous nature was all up in arms for her own brood especially for Alice. Nora could look after herself, and invariably did. Besides Nora was so tiresome! She was always ready to give the family case away to give everything away, preposterously. And, apropos, Mrs. Hooper expressed her annoyance with some silly notions Nora had just expressed to her.
In that scene, so troubled and feverish, compared with the old Roman days, there had been for her, as she well knew, quite another dominating figure. "Just the same!" she thought angrily. "Just as domineering and provoking. Boggling about Uncle Ewen's name, as if it was not worth his remembering! I shall compel him to be civil to my relations, just because it will annoy him so much."
"I have made several attempts here, and I may say they have always come off." Constance threw him a shy glance. She was thinking of a dictum of Uncle Ewen's which he had delivered to her on a walk some days previously. "What is it makes the mathematicians such fools? They never seem to grow up. They tell us they're splendid fellows, and of course we must believe them. But who's to know?"
But the lateral streams had been controlled and again Ewen applied the wrench to thread the regulator to the first cap. Once he failed and then the threads caught. With a yell of victory the veteran gas man threw himself against the long wrench again. "You've got 'er!" exclaimed Colonel Howell as he sprang to Ewen's side and joined him in screwing the regulator into place.
Hooper, who generally found herself at these official luncheons in a place which her small egotism resented, had watched her sister-in-law from a distance, envying her dress, her title, her wealth, bitterly angry that Ewen's sister should have a place in the world that Ewen's wife could never hope to touch, and irrevocably deciding that Ella Risborough was "fast" and gave herself airs.
She shaded her candle, and in a guilty hurry copied down the total on a slip of paper lying on the table, and took the address of Uncle Ewen's bank from the outside of the pass-book lying beside the bills. Having done that, she Closed the drawer again, and crept upstairs like the criminal she felt herself.
Many a long winter night have I listened to the feats of Ewen-a-chin-vig, the faithful and indefatigable guardian of his ancient family, in the hour of their last and greatest trial, affording an example worthy the imitation of every chief, perhaps not beneath the notice of Glengarry himself. About a dozen years since some symptoms of Ewen's decay gave very general alarm to his friends.
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