"Now there’s nothing whatever can happen to those children," said Lady Alicia, as they drove away. "They’re both looking as brown and bonny as they can well look, and once they’re in their beds, they’ll just sleep the round of the clock. As for you, my dear, you’ve hardly been out of the house since they came, and it’s very bad for you." As a rule the children did sleep the round of the clock, but on this particular evening, although they went to sleep directly they were "bedded," as Robina put it, and she had gone home for the night, while Elsa had retired to the back door for a gossip with the minister’s maid, Edmund took it into his head to wake up. Mr. Wycherly was sitting in his arm-chair reading "Marius the Epicurean." It was one of his many imperfections, in the eyes of the inhabitants of Burnhead, that he was known to revel in the works of "yon man, Pater." The very name seemed redolent of papistry, even if the man himself did not happen to be a papist, and it was known that the Reverend Peter Gloag did not approve of his writings. In an English village nobody would have concerned himself as to what anybody read—the amount of reading done at all being quite a negligible quantity—but in a Scottish village, where the cobbler probably reads the "Saturday Review" and the works of Carlyle are as household words, people regard the reading of their neighbours. The light from the lamp fell full on Mr. Wycherly’s white hair and regular, scholarly profile; and the figure in the chair made a pleasant picture of erudite repose. There was something clear-cut and delicately finished about everything connected with Mr. Wycherly’s appearance. One long, slim hand with exquisitely tended nails held his book; the other kept up a noiseless rhythmic beat upon the arm of his chair. Suddenly he heard a little sound, an indescribable small sound as of some soft body moving. He laid down his book and leant forward to listen. Again he heard it, and with it a request for "’Obina." It was not a cry; it was rather a curious, tentative flinging of the word into space to see what would happen. The children’s door was closed but not fastened, Mr. Wycherly’s was wide open, and he immediately hurried across the landing to the children’s room. The light from his lamp exactly opposite to their door, shone in as he pushed it open, showing a fair, curly head and a pair of bright eyes appearing above the side of the cot. Montagu was still fast asleep. "Lie down, my child," Mr. Wycherly whispered, "it is night time, you must go to sleep again." "No," said Edmund firmly but kindly, "you must take me." Mr. Wycherly looked at the wide-awake mutinous person in the cot, then he looked at the peacefully sleeping Montagu in the big four-post bed. To engage in argument with Edmund meant the inevitable waking of his brother. For there would be tears; perhaps loud outcries which would bring Elsa, scornful and capable, to his assistance.