Then began the shopping, such shopping extraordinary as none of the family had ever enjoyed except in dreams; and when it was the object of everybody to conceal their purchases from everybody else. Caroline contrived to make time for a quiet luncheon with Dr. and Mrs. Lucas, to which she took her two youngest boys, since Jock was the godson of the house, and had moreover been shaken off by his two elder brothers. Happily he was too good-tempered to grumble at being thrown over, and his mind was in a beatific state of contemplation of his newly-purchased treasures, a small pistol, a fifteen-bladed knife, and a box of miscellaneous sweets, although his mother had so far succumbed to the weakness of her sex as to prevent the weapon from being accompanied by any ammunition. As to Armine, she wanted to consult Dr. Lucas about the fragile looks and liability to cold that had alarmed her ever since Rob’s exploit. Besides, he was so unlike the others! Had she not seen him quietly make his way into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Lucas kept a box for the Children’s Hospital, and drop into it two bright florins, one of which she had seen Babie hand over to him? “I do think it is not canny,” she said, as if it had been one of his symptoms. “Do you want me to prescribe for it?” “I did try one prescription for having too big a soul; I turned my poor little boy loose into school, and there they half killed him for me, and made the original complaint worse.” “Happily no prescription, ‘neither life, nor death, nor any other creature,’ can cure that complaint,” said the good old doctor, “though, alas! it is only too apt to dry up from within.” “Still I can’t help feeling it rather awful to have to do with a being so spiritual as that, and it appears to me to increase on him, so that he never seems quite to belong to me. And precocity is a dangerous sign, is it not?” “I see,” said the doctor, smiling; “you are going to be a treasure to the faculty, and indulge in anxieties and consultations.” “Now, Dr. Lucas, you know that we were always anxious about Armine. You remember his father said he needed more care than the rest.” Dr. Lucas allowed that this was true; but he only recommended flannel, pale ale, moderation in study, and time to recover the effects of the pump. Both the good old friends were very kind and full of tender congratulation, mingled with a little anxiety, though they were pleased with her good taste and simplicity and absence of all elation. But then she had hardly realised the new position, and seemed to look neither behind nor before. Her only scheme seemed to be to take a house in London for a few months, and then perhaps to go abroad, but of this she could not talk in those old scenes which vividly brought back that castle in the air, never fulfilled, of a holiday in Switzerland with Joe.