Home--that is to say, Westhaven--was in some commotion when Herbert came back and grimly growled out his intelligence as to his own personal affairs. Mrs. Morton had been already apprized, in one of Lord Northmoor's well-considered letters, of his intentions of removing his nephew to a tutor more calculated to prepare for the army, and she had accepted this as promotion such as was his due. However, when the pride of her heart, the tall gentlemanly son, made his appearance in a savage mood, her feelings were all on the other side, and those of Ida exaggerated hers. 'So I'm to go to some disgusting hole where they grind the fellows no end,' was Herbert's account of the matter. 'But surely with your connection there's no need for grinding?' said his mother. Herbert laughed, 'Much you know about it! Nobody cares a rap for connections nowadays, even if old Frank were a connection to do a man any good.' 'But you'll not go and study hard and hurt yourself, my dear,' said his mother, though Herbert's looks by no means suggested any such danger, while Ida added, 'It is not as if he had nothing else to look to, you know. He can't keep you out of the peerage.' 'Can't he then? Why, he can and will too, for thirty or forty years more at least.' 'I thought his health was failing,' said Ida, putting into words a hope her mother had a little too much sense of propriety to utter. 'Bosh, it's only neuralgia, just because he is such a stick he can't take things easy, and lark about and do every one's work--he hasn't the least notion what a gentleman ought to do.' 'It is bred in the bone,' said his mother; 'he always was a shabby poor creature! I always said he would not know how to spend his money.' 'He is a regular screw!' responded Herbert. 'What do you think now! He was in no end of a rage with me just because I went with some of the other fellows to the Colbeam races; and one can't help a bet or two, you know. So I lost twelve pound or so, and what must he do but stop it out of my allowance two pound at a time!' There was a regular outcry at this, and Mrs. Morton declared her poor dear boy should not suffer, but she would make it up to him, and Herbert added that 'it had been unlucky, half of it was that they were riled with him, first because he had shot a ridiculous rook with white wings that my lady made no end of a fuss about.' 'Ah, then it is her spite,' said Ida. 'She's a sly cat, with all her meek ways.' Herbert was not displeased with this evening's sympathy, as he lay outspread on the sofa, with the admiring and pitying eyes of his mother and sister upon him; but he soon began to feel--when he had had his grumble out, and could take his swing at home--that there could be too much of it.