Kitabı oku: «Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood», sayfa 11
“O thou mighty man of money,
Barnes, of Belforest, Esquire,
Innocent is Alfred Richards;
Innocent his honest father;
Innocent as unborn baby
Of development of Midas,
Of the smearing of the Cupid,
Of the fracture of the goose-bill,
Of the writing of the mottoes.
All the Brownlows of St. Kenelm’s,
From the Folly and from Kencroft.
Robert, the aspiring soldier,
Robert, too, the sucking chemist,
John, the Skipjack full of mischief,
John, the great originator,
Allen, the—”
“Allen the uncommon gaby,” broke in Bobus. “Come, don’t waste time, something must be done.”
“Yes, a rational letter must be written and signed by you all,” said his mother. “The question is whether it would be better to do it through your uncle or Mr. Ogilvie.”
“I don’t see why my father should hear of it, or Mr. Ogilvie either,” growled Rob. “I didn’t do those donkeyfied ears.”
“You did the writing, which was five hundred times more donkeyfied,” said Jock.
“It is quite impossible to keep either of them in ignorance,” said Caroline.
“Yes,” repeated all her own three; Jock adding “Father would have known it as soon as you, and I don’t see that my uncle is much worse.”
“He ain’t so soft,” exclaimed Johnny, roused to loyal defence of his parent.
“Soft!” cried Jock, indignantly; “I can tell you father did pitch into me when I caught the old lady’s bonnet out at the window with a fishing-rod.”
“He never flogged you,” said Johnny contemptuously.
“He did!” cried Jock, triumphantly. “At least he flogged Bobus, when—”
“Shut up, you little ape,” thundered Bobus, not choosing to be offered up to the manes of his father’s discipline.
“You think you must explain it to my uncle, mother,” said Allen, rather ruefully.
“Certainly. He ought to be told first, and Mr. Ogilvie next. Depend upon it, he will be far less angry if it is freely confessed and put into his hands and what is more important, Mr. Barnes must attend to him, and acquit the Richardses.”
The general voice agreed, but Rob writhed and muttered, “Can’t you be the one to tell him, Mother Carey?”
“That’s cool,” said Allen, “to ask her to do what you’re afraid of.”
“He couldn’t do anything to her,” said Rob.
However, public opinion went against Rob, and the party of boys dragged him off in their train the less reluctantly that Allen would be spokesman, and he always got on well with his uncle. No one could tell how it was, but the boy had a frank manner, with a sort of address in the manner of narration, that always went far to disarm displeasure, and protected his comrades as well as himself. So it was that, instead of meeting with unmitigated wrath, the boys found that they were allowed the honours and graces of voluntary confession. Allen even thought that his uncle showed a little veiled appreciation of the joke, but this was not deemed possible by the rest.
To exonerate young Richards was the first requisite, and Allen, under his uncle’s eye, drew up a brief note to this effect:—
“SIR,—We beg to apologise for the mischief done in your grounds, and to assure you on our word and honour that it was suggested by no one, that no one admitted us, and no one had any share in it except ourselves.
“ALLEN BROWNLOW
“ROBERT FRIAR BROWNLOW
“ROBERT OTWAY BROWNLOW
“JOHN FRIAR BROWNLOW
“JOHN LUCAS BROWNLOW.”
This letter was taken up the next morning to Belforest by Colonel Brownlow, and the two eldest delinquents, one, curious, amused, and with only compunction enough to flavour an apology, the other cross, dogged, and sheepish, dragged along like a cur in a sling, “just as though he were going to be hanged,” said Janet.
The report of the expedition as given by Allen was thus:—“The servant showed us into a sort of anteroom, and said he would see whether his master would see us. Uncle Robert sent in his card and my letter, and we waited with the door open, and a great screen in front, so that we couldn’t help hearing every word. First there was a great snarl, and then a deferential voice, ‘This alters the case, sir.’ But the old man swore down in his throat that he didn’t care for Colonel Brownlow or Colonel anybody. ‘A gentleman, sir; one of the most respected.’ ‘Then he should bring up his family better.’ ‘Indeed, sir, it might be better to accept the apology. This might not be considered actionable damage.’ ‘We’ll see that!’ ‘Indeed, don’t you agree with me, Mr. Richards, the magistrates would hardly entertain the case.’ ‘Then I’ll appeal; I’ll send a representation to the Home Office.’ ‘Is it not to be considered, sir, whether some of these low papers might not put it in a ludicrous light?’ Then,” continued Allen, who had been most dramatically mimicking the two voices, “we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter, and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us. He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect image of an old miser; almost hump-backed, and as yellow as a mummy. He looked just ready to bite off our heads, but he was amazingly set on finding out which was which among us, and seemed uncommonly struck with my name and Bobus’s. My uncle told him I was called after your father, and he made a snarl just like a dog over a bone. He ended with, ‘So you are Allen Brownlow! You’ll remember this day’s work, youngster.’ I humbly said I should, and so the matter ended.”
“He did not mean any prosecution?”
“O no, that was all quashed, even if it was begun. He must have been under an hallucination that he was a stern parent, cutting me off with a shilling.”
The words had also struck the Colonel, who sought the first opportunity of asking his sister-in-law whether she knew the names of any of her mother’s relations.
“Only that her name was Otway,” said Caroline. “You know I lived with my father’s aunt, who knew nothing about her, and I have never been able to find anything out. Do you know of any connection? Not this old man? Then you would have known.”
“That does not follow, for I was scarcely in Jamaica at all. I had a long illness immediately after going there, was sent home on leave, and then to the depot, and only joined again after the regiment had gone to Canada, when the marriage had taken place. I may have heard the name of Mrs. Allen’s uncle, but I never bore it in my mind.”
“Is there any way of finding out?”
“I will write to Norton. If he does not remember all about it, his wife will.”
“He is the present lieutenant-colonel, I think.”
“Yes, and he was your father’s chief friend. Now that they are at home again, we must have him here one of these days.”
“It would be a wonderful thing if this freak were an introduction to a relation,” said Caroline.
“There was no doubt of his being struck by the combination of Allen and Otway. He chose to understand which were my sons and which my nephews, and when I said that Allen bore your maiden name he assented as if he knew it before, and spoke of your boy having cause to remember this; I am afraid it will not be pleasantly.”
“No,” said Caroline, “it sounded much like a threat. But one would like to know, only I thought Farmer Gould’s little granddaughter was his niece.”
“That might be without preventing your relationship; I will do my best to ascertain it.”
Colonel Norton’s letter gave decisive information that Barnes was the name of the uncle with whom Caroline Otway had been living at the time of her marriage. She had been treated as a poor relation, and seemed to be half-slave, half-governess to the children of the favoured sister, little semi-Spanish tyrants. This had roused Captain Allen’s chivalry, and his friend remembered his saying that, though he had little or nothing of his own, he could at least make her happier than she was in such a family. The uncle was reported to have grown rich in the mahogany trade, and likewise by steamboat speculations, coupled with judicious stock-jobbing among the distressed West Indians, after the emancipation.
“He was a sinister-looking old fellow,” ended Colonel Norton, “and I should think not very particular; but I should be glad to hear that he had done justice to poor Allen’s daughter. He was written to when she was left an orphan, but vouchsafed no answer.”
“Still he may have kept an eye upon you,” added Uncle Robert. “I do not think it was new to him that you had married into our family.”
“If only those unfortunate boys have not ruined everything,” sighed Ellen.
“Little Elvira’s father must have been one of those cousins,” said Caroline. “I wonder what became of the others? She must be—let me see—my second cousin.”
“Not very near,” said Ellen.
“I never had a blood relation before since my old aunt died. I am so glad that brilliant child belongs to me!”
“I daresay old Gould could tell you more,” said the Colonel.
“Is it wise to revive the connection?” asked his wife.
“The Goulds are not likely to presume,” said the Colonel; “and I think that if Caroline takes up the one connection, she is bound to take up the other.”
“How am I to make up to this cross old man?” said Carey. “I can’t go and fawn on him.”
“Certainly not,” said her brother-in-law; “but I think you ought to make some advance, merely as a relation.”
On the family vote, Caroline rather unwillingly wrote a note, explaining that she had only just discovered her kinship with Mr. Barnes, and offering to come and see him; but not the smallest notice was taken of her letter, rather to her relief, though she did not like to hear Ellen augur ill for the future.
Another letter, to old Mr. Gould, begging him to call upon her next market day, met with a far more ready response. When at his entrance she greeted him with outstretched hands, and—“I never thought you were a connection;” the fine old weather-beaten face was strangely moved, as the rugged hand took hers, and the voice was husky that said—
“I thought there was a likeness in the voice, but I never imagined you were grandchild to poor Carey Barnes; I beg your pardon, to Mrs. Otway.”
“You knew her? You must let me see something of my little cousin! I know nothing of my relations and my brother-in-law said he thought you could tell me.”
“I ought to be able, for the family lived at Woodbridge all my young days,” said the farmer.
The history was then given. The present lord of the manor had been the son of a land surveyor. He was a stunted, sickly, slightly deformed lad, noted chiefly for skill in cyphering, and therefore had been placed in a clerkship. Here a successful lottery ticket had been the foundation of his fortunes; he had invested it in the mahogany trade, and had been one of those men with whom everything turned up a prize. When a little over thirty, he had returned to his own neighbourhood, looking any imaginable age. He had then purchased Belforest, furnished it sumptuously, and laid out magnificent gardens in preparation for his bride, a charming young lady of quality. But she had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church, leaving poor Mr. Barnes in the case of the poor craven bridegroom, into whose feelings no one ever inquired.
Mr. Barnes had gone back to the West Indies at once, and never appeared in England again till he came home, a broken and soured old man, to die. There had been two sisters, and Caroline fancied that the old farmer had had some tenderness for the elder one, but she had married, before her brother’s prosperity, a poor struggling builder, and both had died young, leaving their child dependent on her uncle. His younger sister had been the favourite; he had taken her back with him to America, and, married her to a man of Spanish blood, connected with him in business. The only one of her children who survived childhood was educated in England, treated as his uncle’s heir, and came to Belforest for shooting. Thus it was that he had fallen in love with Farmer Gould’s pretty daughter, and as it seemed, by her mother’s contrivance, though without her father’s consent, had made her his wife.
The wrath of Mr. Barnes was implacable. He cast off the favourite nephew as entirely as he had cast off the despised niece, and deprived him of all the means he had been led to look on as his right. The young man had nothing of his own but an estate in the small island of San Ildefonso, of very little value, and some of his former friends made interest to obtain a vice-consulship for him at the Spanish town. Then, after a few years, both husband and wife died, leaving this little orphan to the care of her grandfather, who had written to Mr. Barnes on her father’s death, but had heard nothing from him, and had too much honest pride to make any further application.
“My little cousin,” said Caroline, “the first I ever knew. Pray bring her to see me, and let her stay with me long enough for me to know her.”
The old man began to prepare her for the child’s being shy and wild, though perhaps her aunt was too particular with her, and expected too much. Perhaps she would be homesick, he said, so wistfully that it was plain that he did not know how to exist without his darling; but he was charmed with the invitation, and Caroline was pleased to see that he did not regard her as his grandchild’s rival, but as representing the cherished playmate of his youth.
CHAPTER XIII. – THE RIVAL HEIRESSES
You smile, their eager ways to see,
But mark their choice when they
To choose their sportive garb are free,
The moral of their play.
Keble.
One curious part of the reticence of youth is that which relates to its comprehension of grown-up affairs. There is a smile with which the elders greet any question on the subject, half of wonder, half of amusement, which is perfectly intolerable to the young, who remain thinking that they are regarded as presumptuous and absurd, and thus will do anything rather than expose themselves to it again.
Thus it was that Mrs. Brownlow flattered herself that her children never put two and two together when she let them know of the discovery of their relationship. Partly she judged by herself. She was never in the habit of forecasting, and for so clever and spirited a woman, she thought wonderfully little. She had plenty of intuitive sense, decided rapidly and clearly, and could easily throw herself in other people’s thoughts, but she seldom reflected, analysed or moralised, save on the spur of the moment. She lived chiefly in the present, and the chief events of her life had all come so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her, that she was all the less inclined to guess at the future, having always hitherto been taken by surprise.
So, when Jock observed in public—“Mother, they say at Kencroft that the old miser ought to leave you half his money. Do you think he will?” it was with perfect truth that she answered, “I don’t think at all about it.”
It was taken in the family as an intimation that she would not talk about it, and while she supposed that the children drew no conclusions, they thought the more.
Allen was gone to Eton, but Janet and Bobus had many discussions over their chemical experiments, about possibilities and probabilities, odd compounds of cleverness and ignorance.
“Mother must be heir-at-law, for her grandmother was eldest,” said Janet.
“A woman can’t be heir-at-law,” said Bobus.
“The Salique law doesn’t come into England.”
“Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of the old man’s daughter.
“Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?”
“Besides,”—Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility—“when there’s nobody but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among them.”
“Who gets it, then?”
“Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all blood-suckers.”
“I’m sure,” said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, “that abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a will, mother will be heiress.”
“Only halves with that black Undine of Allen’s,” sturdily persisted Bobus. “Is she coming here, Janet?”
“Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough.”
“If mother gets rich she won’t have all that teaching to bother her,” said Bobus.
“And I can go on with my education,” said Janet.
“Girl’s education does not signify,” said Bobus. “Now I shall be able to get the very best instruction in physical science, and make some great discovery. If I could only go and study at Halle, instead of going on droning here.”
“Oh! boys can always get educated if they choose. You are going to Eton or Winchester after this term.”
“Not if I can get any sense into mother. I don’t want to waste my time on those stupid classics and athletics. I say, Janet, it’s time to see whether the precipitation has taken place.”
The two used to try experiments together, in Bobus’s end of the attic, to an extent that might make the presence of a strange child in the house dangerous to herself as well as to everyone else.
Mrs. Gould herself brought the little girl, trying to impress on Mrs. Brownlow that if she was indocile it was not her fault, but her grandfather could not bear to have her crossed.
The elders did not wonder at his weakness, for the creature was wonderfully lovely and winning, with a fearless imperiousness that subdued everyone to her service. So brilliant was she, that Essie and Ellie, though very pretty little girls, looked faded and effaced beside this small empress, whose air seemed to give her a right to bestow her favours.
“I am glad to be here!” she observed, graciously, to her hostess, “for you are my cousin and a lady.”
“And pray what are you?” asked Janet.
“I am la Senora Dona Elvira Maria de Guadalupe de Menella,” replied the damsel, with a liquid sonorousness so annihilating, that Janet made a mocking courtesy; and her mother said it was like asking the head of the house of Hapsburg if she were a lady!
With some disappointment at Allen’s absence, the little Donna motioned Bobus to sit by her side at dinner-time, and when her grandfather looked in somewhat later to wish her good-bye, in mingled hope and fear of her insisting on going home with him, she cared for nothing but his admiration of her playing at kings and queens with Armine and Barbara, in the cotton velvet train of the dressing up wardrobe.
“No, she did not want to go home. She never wanted to go back to River Hollow.”
Nor would she even kiss him till she had extorted the assurance that he had been shaved that morning.
The old man went away blessing Mrs. Brownlow’s kindness to his child, and Janet was universally scouted for muttering that it was a heartless little being. She alone remained unenthralled by Elvira’s chains. The first time she went to Kencroft, she made Colonel Brownlow hold her up in his arms to gather a bough off his own favourite double cherry; and when Mother Carey demurred, she beguiled Aunt Ellen into taking her on her own responsibility to the dancing lessons at the assembly rooms.
There she electrified the dancing-master, and all beholders, seeming to catch inspiration from the music, and floating along with a wondrous swimming grace, as her dainty feet twinkled, her arms wreathed themselves, and her eyes shone with enjoyment.
If she could only have always danced, or acted in the garden! Armine’s and Babie’s perpetual romantic dramas were all turned by her into homage to one and the same princess. She never knew or cared whether she were goddess or fairy, Greek or Briton, provided she had the crown and train; but as Babie much preferred action to magnificence, they got on wonderfully well without disputes. There was a continual performance, endless as a Chinese tragedy, of Spenser’s Faery Queene, in which Elfie was always Gloriana, and Armine and Babie were everybody else in turn, except the wicked characters, who were represented by the cabbages and a dummy.
“Reading was horrid,” Elvira said, and certainly hers deserved the epithet. Her attainments fell far behind those of Essie and Ellie, and she did not mean to improve them. Her hostess let her alone till she had twice shaken her rich mane at her grandfather, and refused to return with him; and he had shown himself deeply grateful to Mrs. Brownlow for keeping her there, and had said he hoped she was good at her lessons.
The first trial resulted in Elvira’s going to sleep over her book, the next in her playing all sorts of ridiculous tricks, and sulking when stopped, and when she was forbidden to speak or go out till she had repeated three answers in the multiplication table, she was the next moment singing and dancing in defiance in the garden. Caroline did not choose to endure this, and went to fetch her in, thus producing such a screaming, kicking, rolling fury that Mrs. Coffinkey might have some colour for the statement that Mrs. Folly Brownlow was murdering all her children. The cook, as the strongest person in the house, was called, carried her in and put her to bed, where she fell sound asleep, and woke, hungry, in high spirits, and without an atom of compunction.
When called to lessons she replied—“No, I’m going back to grandpapa.”
“Very well,” was all Caroline answered, thinking wholesome neglect the best treatment.
In an hour’s time Mr. Gould made his appearance with his grandchild. She had sought him out among the pigs in the market-place, pulled him by the coat, and insisted on being taken home.
His politeness was great, but he was plainly delighted, and determined to believe that her demand sprang from affection, and not naughtiness. Elvira stood caressing him, barely vouchsafing to look at her hostess, and declaring that she never meant to come back.
Not a fortnight had passed, however, before she burst upon them again, kissing them all round, and reiterating that she hated her aunt, and would live with Mother Carey. Mr. Gould had waited to be properly ushered in. He was distressed and apologetic, but he had been forced to do his tyrant’s behest. There had been more disturbances than ever between her and her aunt, and Mrs. Gould had declared that she would not manage the child any longer, while Elvira was still more vehement to return to Mother Carey. Would Mrs. Brownlow recommend some school or family where the child would be well cared for? Mrs. Brownlow did more, offering herself to undertake the charge.
Spite of all the naughtiness, she loved the beautiful wild creature, and could not bear to think of intrusting her to strangers; she knew, too, that her brother and sister-in-law had no objection, and it was the obvious plan. Mr. Gould would make some small payment, and the child was to be made to understand that she must be obedient, learn her lessons, and cease to expect to find a refuge with her grandfather when she was offended.
She drew herself up with childish pride and grace saying, “I will attend to Mrs. Brownlow, for she is my cousin and my equal.”
To a certain degree the little maiden kept her word. She was the favourite plaything of the boys, and got on well with Babie, who was too bright and yielding to quarrel with any one.
But Janet’s elder-sisterly authority was never accepted by the newcomer. “I couldn’t mind her, she looked so ugly,” said she in excuse; and probably the heavy, brown, dull complexion and large features were repulsive in themselves to the sensitive fancy of the creature of life and beauty. At any rate, they were jarring elephants, as said Eleanor, who was growing ambitious, and sometimes electrified the public with curious versions of the long words more successfully used by Armine and Babie.
Caroline succeeded in modelling a very lovely profile in bas-relief of the exquisite little head, and then had it photographed. Mary Ogilvie, coming to Kenminster as usual when her holidays began in June, found the photograph in the place of honour on her brother’s chimney-piece, and a little one beside it of the artist herself.
So far as Carey herself was concerned, Mary was much better satisfied. She did not look so worn or so flighty, and had a quieter and more really cheerful tone and manner, as of one who had settled into her home and occupations. She had made friends, too—few, but worth having; and there were those who pronounced the Folly the pleasantest house in Kenminster, and regarded the five o’clock tea, after the weekly physical science lecture at the school, as a delightful institution.
Of course, the schoolmaster was one of these; and when Mary found how all his paths tended to the Pagoda, she hated herself for being a suspicious old duenna. Nevertheless, she could not but be alarmed by finding that her project of a walking tour through Brittany was not, indeed, refused, but deferred, with excuses about having work to finish, being in no hurry, and the like.
“I think you ought to go,” said Mary at last.
“I see no ought in the case. Last year the work dragged, and was oppressive; but you see how different it has become.”
“That is the very reason,” said Mary, the colour flying to her checks. “It will not do to stay lingering here as we did last summer, and not only on your own account.”
“You need not be afraid,” was the muttered answer, as David bent down his head over the exercise he was correcting. She made no answer, and ere long he began again, “I don’t mean that her equal exists, but I am not such a fool as to delude myself with a spark of hope.”
“She is too nice for that,” said Mary.
“Just so,” he said, glad to relieve himself when the ice had been broken. “There’s something about her that makes one feel her to be altogether that doctor’s, as much as if he were present in the flesh.”
“Are you hoping to wear that out? For I don’t think you will.”
“I told you I had no hope,” he answered, rather petulantly. “Even were it otherwise, there is another thing that must withhold me. It has got abroad that she may turn out heiress to the old man at Belforest.”
“In such a hopeless case, would it not be wiser to leave this place altogether?”
“I cannot,” he exclaimed; then remembering that vehemence told against him, he added, “Don’t be uneasy; I am a reasonable man, and she is a woman to keep one so; but I think I am useful to her, and I am sure she is useful to me.”
“That I allow she has been,” said Mary, looking at her brother’s much improved appearance; “but—”
“Moths and candles to wit,” he returned; “but don’t be afraid, I attract no notice, and I think she trusts me about her boys.”
“But what is it to come to?”
“I have thought of that. Understand that it is enough for me to live near her, and be now and then of some little service to her.”
They were interrupted by a note, which Mr. Ogilvie read, and handed to his sister with a smile:—
“DEAR MR. OGILVIE,—Could you and Mary make it convenient to look in this evening? Bobus has horrified his uncle by declining to go up for a scholarship at Eton or Winchester, and I should be very glad to talk it over with you. Also, I shall have to ask you to take little Armine into school after the holidays.
“Yours sincerely,
“C. O. BROWNLOW.”
“What does the boy mean?” asked Mary. “I thought he was the pride of your heart.”
“So he is; but he is ahead of his fellows, and ought to be elsewhere. All measures have been taken for sending him up to stand at one of the public schools, but I thought him very passive about it. He is an odd boy—reserved and self-concentrated—quite beyond his uncle’s comprehension, and likely to become headstrong at a blind exercise of authority.”
“I used to like Allen best,” said Mary.
“He is the pleasantest, but there’s more solid stuff in Bobus. That boy’s school character is perfect, except for a certain cool opinionativeness, which seldom comes out with me, but greatly annoys the undermasters.”
“Is he a prig?”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid he is. He’s unpopular, for he does not care for games; but his brother is popular enough for both.”
“Jock?—the monkey!”
“His brains run to mischief. I’ve had to set him more impositions than any boy in the school, and actually to take his form myself, for simply the undermasters can’t keep up discipline or their own tempers. As to poor M. le Blanc, I find him dancing and shrieking with fury in the midst of a circle of snorting, giggling boys; and when he points out ce petit monstre, Jock coolly owns to having translated ‘Croquons les,’ let us croquet them; or ‘Je suis blesse,’ I am blest.”
“So the infusion of brains produces too much effervescence.”
“Yes, but the whole school has profited, and none more so than No. 2 of the other family, who has quite passed his elder brother, and is above his namesake whenever it is a case of plodding ability versus idle genius. But, after all, how little one can know of one’s boys.”
“Or one’s girls,” said Mary, thinking of governess experiences.
It was a showery summer evening when the brother and sister walked up to the Folly in a partial clearing, when the evening sun made every bush twinkle all over with diamond drops. Childish voices were heard near the gate, and behind a dripping laurel were seen Elvira, Armine, and Barbara engaged in childhood’s unceasing attempt to explore the centre of the earth.
“What do you expect to find there?” they were asked.
“Little kobolds, with pointed caps, playing at ball with rubies and emeralds, and digging with golden spades,” answered Babie.
“And they shall give me an opal ring,” said Elfie, “But Armine does not want the kobolds.”
“He says they are bad,” said Babie. “Now are they, Mr. Ogilvie? I know elder women are, and erl kings and mist widows, but poor Neck, that sat on the water and played his harp, wasn’t bad, and the dear little kobolds were so kind and funny. Now are they bad elves?”
