Jim was hurrying home to the Rectory full of the plans that had been settled between him and his new friend, full of the unusual excitement of something to do which was novel at least, and might be amusing, and was voluntary, exacted from him by no one. It was the loveliest spring night, the first of May, but full of a softness which is little to be depended upon at that season, the stars shining sweetly in a sky which was fresh and luminous, with nothing of the sparkle of frost in it, but a prophecy, almost a realisation, of summer. The village was quiet, as it usually was at that hour; the window of the ‘Blue Boar’ still shining with light, for it was not yet the closing hour: but all except the habituÉs of that respectable place, where general drinking was not encouraged, had left. Jim did not feel the drawing to-night of those invisible links which drew him to the ‘Blue Boar,’ and he was hurrying along towards home, when he encountered a wrapped-up figure which paused as he approached, but which he did not at first recognise. Indeed, to tell the truth, he thought for a moment with a quick movement of anger, that it was one of his own belongings, mother or sister, who had taken the liberty of coming out thus, veiled and covered up, to look for him, which was a thing that the young man in his greatness of superiority would not very readily have forgiven. But it was not anything so innocent as poor Mrs. Plowden with her shawl over her head, strolling forth, as she would have explained, because it was such a beautiful night, just to breathe the air; not anything nearly so innocent. The dark figure stopped as Jim came up, and with a little cough to call his attention, said: ‘Is this Mr. Jim?’

‘Oh!’ he said, coming to a sudden pause, ‘Mrs. Brown!’ but not with any delight in his tone.

‘I fear,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘there is not much pleasure in seeing me in that exclamation; but then, of course, you can’t see me, which takes from it all the uncomplimentary meaning. And where are you coming from at this hour—some of your smart parties?’

‘You know as well as I do,’ he said, aggrieved, ‘that there are no smart parties here.’

‘What do you call Mrs. FitzStephen’s ball?’ she said, with her laugh of mockery. ‘I have heard that it was very smart—the young ladies’ dresses beautiful, and diamonds upon some of the old ones. I call that very smart. Unfortunately, I hear, there were no Royal Highnesses—unless it was yourself, Mr. Jim.’

‘How fond you are of laughing at people!’ said Jim.

‘I—the most innocent woman in the world! I will be very civil, now, if you will walk as far as my house with me. I don’t mind the road up to the Hall, but here in the village, where a tipsy man might run up against me——’

‘Oh, I don’t think you need be afraid,’ said Jim; but he could not refuse so small a request, though he did not like it—neither the interruption nor the fact, indeed, of escorting the schoolmistress, who was exceedingly amusing, and knew how to make herself agreeable in her own place; but here, outside, where he might be recognised by any one! Jim was half disgusted with himself for this feeling, yet felt it all the same, and turned back with a little reluctance, which he concealed, indeed, but which, from his companion’s quick eyes, was not altogether to be concealed.

‘You have been somewhere to-night where you ought to have been,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘One soon gets to know the ways of young men. Sometimes you are not proud of the place in which you have been spending your evening, but to-night it’s different. You are going home in a hurry to tell them all about it before they go to bed. What a pity that I should have met you just to-night!’

‘It can never be a pity that I should have met you,’ said Jim, a little sulkily, ‘if I can be of any use.’

‘Poor boy,’ she said, with a half laugh, and then she added: ‘I have been among naughty people to-night, who have been putting naughty schemes in my head. Tell me what nice, good society you have been having, to put it out of my mind.’

‘Where are those naughty people to be found?’ said Jim.

‘Ah, you would rather know that than tell me your news! But they are not naughty people of your kind; they wouldn’t amuse you at all. There is no fun in their naughtiness, but rather the reverse: envy and malice and all uncharitableness, not the folly that pleases you poor boys. Poor boys! for the one often leads to the other, don’t you know, when you outgrow the fun and yet love the naughtiness, and get out of the way of all that’s good——’

‘You are in a very serious humour to-night.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not more than usual. I’m a very serious woman, though you may not have found it out. You have not found it out, have you?’ she said, with a sudden laugh, apparently overcome by the absurdity of the situation, which, however, Jim did not feel at all. He saw no fun in it: all that he was afraid of was that with her laugh, though it was very soft, she might attract the observation of some one whom they met.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I—I haven’t thought about the subject, I never tried to——’

‘Understand, did you?’ she said quickly; ‘took me as you found me? Of course you did. And you were quite right. Don’t be afraid that any one will find you with me. In the first place, there is nobody to be seen, and in the second place——’

‘I am not at all afraid of any one seeing me. I am not responsible to any one. I hope I am of an age to choose my own friends.’

‘Well spoken, Mr. Jim, and very manly of you; and I am glad you would stand by me like that, as one of your own friends. Now, there is something I would like you to do for me. It is a great secret, and you must tell nobody of the request I am going to make.’

‘Well,’ he said, with a laugh, ‘I hope I don’t want much cautioning on that subject. The moment one is told that a matter is private, it is sacred—at least, to a man.’

‘Ah! you think more sacred to a man than a woman, Mr. Jim? I don’t agree with you; but still, I’m glad that it’s your view. If you should find out—— You know of all that is going on in the family, don’t you?’

‘In the family,’ cried Jim, astonished; ‘in what family?’

‘You may well be surprised. What should I have to do with your respectable family?’ cried Mrs. Brown, laughing again. It was not like other people’s laughter; it was a thin little sound, which, if it conveyed mockery of other people, seemed in some indescribable way to mock herself too. ‘But yet,’ she added, ‘it is really your respectable family I mean. If your aunt should be hard pressed by those people, and felt as if she might be crushed altogether—now, mind what I say—felt as if she might be crushed altogether——’

‘Do you mean my aunt Emily, Lady William? Why, who in the name of wonder wants to crush her altogether? You have got some joke in your mind that I don’t understand.’

‘Felt,’ repeated Mrs. Brown with emphasis, ‘as if she might be crushed altogether. I will make you say it after me to impress it on your memory, if you don’t mind. Felt as if she might be crushed altogether—you understand?’

‘I understand the words: but what they mean, or what you mean——’

‘That is quite enough, so long as you know the words. Keep them fast, and in such a case let me know; not until you see there is very grave trouble, mind—not if you hear that she sees her way out of it.’

‘You are speaking Hebrew, I think,’ said Jim.

‘No, I am speaking English. You will see, even if they don’t tell you, by your people’s looks, or you will get it out of one of your sisters. Mind! if you find that they are all in the dumps, and she feels herself beaten—you’ll see it in their looks—let me know. If I should not be here I will let you know where I am.’

‘Are you going away?’ said Jim.

She did not make him any immediate answer, but turned round upon him, in the light of a lamp which they were approaching, putting back her veil a little, with a mischievous look. ‘Should you be very sorry? No, I’m afraid you would not be very sorry,’ she said.

‘Yes, I should,’ said Jim, with an impetuosity which alarmed him next moment, as he suddenly realised that somebody passing (but there was no one passing), or somebody unseen at a door or window, might hear what he said. ‘I should be very sorry indeed to think I should not see you any more,’ he added, in a lower tone.

‘But that dreadful fate need not come, even if I were to leave Watcham,’ she said, in her mocking tone. ‘We met before I came here, which is the origin of all our acquaintance, and we may meet after I leave here. The world is a wide place. I shall let you know, somehow, where I am: and in the case I have so impressed upon you——’

‘The case in which Aunt Emily (of all people in the world!) should find herself crushed altogether.’

‘You are a good scholar. You have learned your lesson. In that case you will take care—but only when there is no other hope—to let me know. Now I’ll release you, Mr. Jim. I won’t exact that you should come to my very door. No harm can happen to me between this and my door.’

‘It is the only part of the way where anything could happen,’ said Jim. ‘It’s the middle of the town.’

‘A wonderful town, and a wonderful middle,’ she said, laughing. ‘No, nothing will happen. Good night, and I am more obliged to you than I can say.’

Jim stood irresolute, and watched her as she drew down her veil over her face, and hurried along to the door of the schoolhouse. He was, on the whole, well pleased to get rid of her, but he did not like the idea of being thus dismissed at the moment it occurred to her to do so—a sensation which roused his pride and kept him, accordingly, standing where she left him until he saw that she had reached her own door. She turned round there and made a slight gesture of farewell, or dismissal. It was just at that moment that the convives at the ‘Blue Boar’ began to stream out, with a little noise of voices and feet, the last jokes of the little convivial club. Jim turned and hurried homeward, not without an uncomfortable feeling that his return would correspond unpleasingly with the dispersion of that assembly. But yet it was not his fault.

His mother was in the drawing-room still, waiting for him, or at least pretending not to wait for him, but to be very busy with something she had to do. And Jim had by this time remembered again the great news he had been carrying home so eagerly when he met Mrs. Brown. Though Jim detested the ‘parish’ in the official sense of the word, he was not without a natural feeling for his own side; and it pleased him almost as much as if he had been a Rector’s son of the more orthodox description to find that the new curate, with his immense commotion as of a new broom, found it necessary after all to have recourse to the old rulers and their ways for help. He had, I need not say, not the faintest idea of the curate’s benevolent intentions towards himself; but Mr. Osborne had been a little superior in the morning—it was his nature to be a little superior—and his final appeal for help to Jim, who of all the Rectory family was the only one whom nobody else would have thought of appealing to, was a triumph which Jim could not but be sensible of. His mother looked up at him from her sewing with those curves about her eyes which he had grown accustomed to, and did not at this present moment take any notice of, notwithstanding the keen inspection of him which she made instantly, an inspection so keen that it seemed to cut below the surface and see what never can be seen. Jim was more or less aware of this inspection when he had anything to conceal, but on this occasion, having nothing to conceal, it did not occur to him. ‘Have the girls gone to bed?’ he said, in a disappointed tone. He had brought in with him no heavy odour of tobacco or other scent inharmonious with the place, but a whole atmosphere of fresh air, cool and pure, to which the haste of his arrival gave an impetus, and which seemed to fill and refresh the whole room, which was half dark, with only Mrs. Plowden’s solitary lamp shining on the round table. ‘They’ve gone upstairs,’ she said, rising to meet him with that sudden sweetness of relief which fills an anxious heart when its anxiety is found unnecessary. ‘Do you want them? Shall I call them? Oh, Jim, they will be too happy to come.’

‘I’ll call them myself,’ he said, then paused—‘unless it will disturb my father! He looked a little worried at dinner.’

‘It is like you to think of your father.’ Mrs. Plowden could not but caress her son’s shoulder as she passed him. ‘You can always see farther than any one—with your heart, my dear. Yes, he was worried. But never mind that; I’ll call the girls.’

They came at the call like two birds flitting noiselessly down the staircase, and came into the room with a faint rustle as of wings.

‘Jim has something he wants to tell you,’ the mother said, and there went a quick glance round the three like an electrical flash; oh! of such ease, joy, consolation to themselves; of such admiration, enthusiasm for him! That there should be nothing to lament over, nothing to find fault with, meant whole litanies of honour and praise to Jim.

He told them his story with a pleasure which found an immediate echo and reflection from his mother and Emmy. Florence, of whose sympathy he had felt most sure, had turned a little away.

‘He seemed struck all of a heap,’ said Jim, not pausing to choose his language, ‘when he heard we’d had those sort of things before. He thinks he’s the first to do everything; and when I told him it was the respectable folks that came and the FitzStephens and so forth, and the old women—Mrs. Lloyd and the rest——’

‘Jim,’ cried Florence, seizing his arm, ‘it was ungenerous to mention Mrs. Lloyd.’

‘Why?’ cried Jim, opening his eyes; and Florry made no reply. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Osborne was taken all aback, as I tell you. He says it is the men he wants to catch—the fellows down by the river, that sort. When I told him he might as soon look for the Prince of Wales, I never saw a man so broken down. He said, “How are we to catch hold of ’em, Plowden? What are we to do to fetch ’em? Come down with me,” he said. “You must have known some of them from boys. Come down, you and me together, and let’s see what we can do.” I said to myself, “Oho, my fine fellow! for all so grand as you think yourself, you can’t get on without the oldest inhabitant after all.”’

‘But, Jim, you’ll help him,’ cried Emmy; ‘so will I, I am sure, with all my heart. We have always wanted to get hold of them; and you could do something, Jim, if you were working with him.’

‘Oh yes, I shall help him,’ said Jim in a magisterial way, ‘fast enough. He isn’t a bad sort of fellow when you know him. I said I’d go down with him when the fellows were at home in the evening whenever he liked. Of course, as he said, I know them all; half of them I’ve licked or they’ve licked me. He has sense to see the advantage of that, and, of course, now he’s asked me I’ll do whatever I can for him; and see if I don’t have them up to hear all the tootle-te-tooting and you girls singing and all the rest.’

‘If your father approves, Jim,’ said Mrs. Plowden. ‘We cannot make quite sure that your father approves.’

‘Oh, papa will approve,’ cried Emmy. ‘I am sure he really knows how much good there is in Mr. Osborne. He only does not like his little—— Well, I don’t like to call it conceit.’

‘Excellent opinion of himself; but that’s so common with young men,’ said the Hector’s wife.

And Florence—Florence who was the lively one, who on any ordinary occasion would have been in the heat of the discussion, talking now in the tones of Mr. Osborne, now like old Mrs. Lloyd, now like all the ‘fellows’ at Riverside—Florence said nothing at all! That is, nothing to speak of—nothing for her. She kept her face away from the light, and threw in a monosyllable now and then; and when Mr. Osborne’s conceit was spoken of, threw up her head with an indignation which happily nobody perceived. To think they should discuss him so, who was doing all this, giving up his pride in his superior management, for their sake—appealing to Jim! It seemed to Florry that the force of noble self-abnegation could not further go.