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Updated: June 2, 2025
When the boy was old enough to go to Eton, he seemed still more remote from his mother's love and sympathy. He was passionately fond of field sports, and those Lady Jane Vawdrey detested. He was backwards in all his studies, despite the careful coaching he had received from the mild Anglican curate of Briarwood village.
Vawdrey had not waited more than ten minutes when there came the thud of hoofs upon the soft track, a flash of gray in the distance, something flying over those forky branches sprawling across the way, then a half-sweet, half-shrill call, like a bird's, at which the keeper's children scattered themselves like a brood of scared chickens, and now a rush, and a gray pony shooting suddenly into the air and coming down on the other side of the gate, as if he were a new kind of skyrocket.
Somewhat to his surprise, and much to his delight, Roderick Vawdrey escaped that maternal lecture which he was wont undutifully to describe as a "wigging." When he entered the drawing-room in full dress just about ten minutes before the first of the guests was announced, Lady Jane received him with a calm affectionateness, and asked him no questions about his disposal of the afternoon.
My health has been declining ever since you left us. I was always a fragile creature, as you know, even in your dear papa's time; but of late the least exertion has made me tremble like a leaf. I bear up, for Conrad's sake. He is so anxious and unhappy when he sees me suffer, and I am glad to spare him anxiety. "Your old friend, Mr. Vawdrey, looks well and happy, but I do not see much of him.
He went to the office two or three times before the return message had come; but at last it was handed to him, and he read it by the office-lamp: "Captain Winstanley, Abbey House, Hampshire, to Mr. Vawdrey, St. Heliers. "My wife is seriously ill, but in no immediate danger. The doctors order extreme quiet; all agitation is to be carefully avoided.
What are you going to be, Rorie? What are you going to do with your liberty? Are you going into Parliament?" Mr. Vawdrey indulged in a suppressed yawn. "My mother would like it," he said, "but upon my word I don't care about it. I don't take enough interest in my fellow-creatures." "If they were foxes, you'd be anxious to legislate for them," suggested Vixen.
If you are married you shall be my housekeeper, and your husband shall be my butler, and your children shall run wild about the place, and be made as much of as the litter of young foxes Bates reared in a corner of the stable-yard, when Mr. Vawdrey was at Eton." "Oh, miss, I don't want no husband nor no children, I only want you for my missus. And when you come of age, will you live here, miss?"
"Let me lie on the ground alone, and think of him, and wail for him." That is what Violet Tempest would have said, if she could have expressed her desire clearly. Roderick Vawdrey went back to the Abbey House after the funeral, and contrived to see Miss McCroke, who was full of sympathy for everybody. "Do let me see Violet, that's a dear creature," he said.
Vawdrey exclaimed: "Vixen, if you don't keep that dog within bounds, I shall think him as great a nuisance as a stepson. I offered to marry you, you know, not you and your dog." "You are very rude!" cried Vixen. "You don't expect me to be polite, I hope. What is the use of marrying one's old playfellow if one cannot be uncivil to her now and then?
Three days before the dinner, Vixen riding Arion home through the shrubbery, after a long morning in the Forest, was startled by the vision of a dog-cart a few yards in front of her, a cart, which, at the first glance, she concluded must belong to Roderick Vawdrey. The wheels were red, the horse had a rakish air, the light vehicle swung from side to side as it spun around the curve.
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