“Taken away the Punch? Oh, lord! That is real mean,” said Brancepeth, with his face growing very dark. “Merely because I gave it you? What devils women are!” “I always telled you, Harry,” said Jack solemnly. “I always telled you that mammy could be nasty. You’ve set her back up, that’s what you’ve done.” Jack was sitting astride of an Exmoor pony with his left hand resting on the crupper, and his face turned full on his friend in melancholy reproach. Harry was on the pedestrians’ side of the rails and had stopped the rider under a tree in full fresh leaf. This was the only way now in which he could see the children, when they were out walking or riding, and he managed to waylay them. The nursery doors were closed against him, and he felt his exile as bitterly as the cast-out Peri of the poem. “You should have put up with mammy,” said Jack, with the superiority of a sage, “’cos you can’t come to us now she’s angry with you. And when she’s angry once, it lasts a long long while, for ever, and ever, and ever.” His tone was very impressive; he spoke as if he had a hundred years’ experience behind him; and his big soft black eyes had tears in them; he missed his Harry. “You dear little beggar!” said Brancepeth tenderly, but glancing apprehensively at the groom on the off-side. “Don’t fidget your pony’s mouth, Jack; keep your bridle hand quiet, low down and quiet.” “That’s the little Duke,” said some work-people walking past, and smiled good-naturedly. “What a little love!” said some ladies. “You’ve got Tom Tit, Jack, and you’d better gallop him,” said Brancepeth, nervously conscious of the open ears of the stolid and wooden-faced groom. “Don’t let his Grace hustle his pony; there can’t be a worse habit,” he said to that functionary. “Never hustle your cattle, Jack, do you understand? Off with you, dear! I want to see how you go.” He watched the pretty figure of the boy as Tom Tit skurried over the tan with his undocked tail switching the ground, and his sturdy, shaggy little head pulling wilfully at the bridle. “Took his Punch away! Good lord! What out-and-out brutes women are,” he thought, as he leaned over the rail under the green leaves in the sunshine. But his heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease, and he envied Hurstmanceaux the power he had over these children and their future. “Harry’s been hard hit over the Oaks,” said one of his friends, staring after him, to another as they passed. “Never saw him look so blue in all his days.” “No; he’s got to marry Lady Kenny, I suspect,” said another of his friends, using the title by which she had been known to the town so long.