"No, no, mother, not a bit; just as if I would when I know how anxious you are! It was only this. Old Ben is always grumbling about the place going to ruin, as he calls it, and I told him, to please him, that he might clean up some of the big guns." "But you should not have done this, my dear." "No; I'll tell him not to, mother. And I'd made an arrangement with him to meet him every morning out in the primrose dell to practise sword-cutting. I was going to-morrow morning, but I won't go now." Lady Royland pressed her lips to the boy's forehead, and smiled in his face. "Thank you, my dear," she said, softly. "Recollect you are everything to me now! And I want your help and comfort now I am so terribly alone. Master Pawson is profuse in his offers of assistance to relieve me of the management here, but I want that assistance to come from my son." "Of course!" said Roy, haughtily. "He's only the secretary, and if any one is to take father's place, it ought to be me." "Yes; and you shall, Roy, my dear. You are very young, but now this trouble has come upon us, you must try to be a man and my counsellor so that when your father returns--" She ceased speaking, and Roy pressed her hands encouragingly as he saw her lips trembling and that she had turned ghastly white. "When your father returns," she said, now firmly, "we must let him see that we have managed everything well." "Then why not, as it's war time, let Ben do what he wanted, and we'll put the place in a regular state of defence?" "No, no, no, my dear," said Lady Royland, with a shudder. "Why should you give our peaceful happy home even the faintest semblance of war, when it can by no possibility come into this calm, quiet, retired nook. No, my boy, not that, please." "Very well, mother. Then I'll go riding round to see the tenants, and look after the things at home just as you wish me to. Will that do?" Lady Royland smiled, and then pressed her son's arm. "Go up now, then, to Master Pawson's room," she said; "and recollect that one of the things I wish you to do is to be more studious than you would be if your father were at home." Roy nodded and hurried up into the corridor, thinking to himself that Master Pawson would not like his being so much in his mother's confidence. "Then he'll have to dislike it. He has been a bit too forward lately, speaking to the servants as if he were master here. I heard him quite bully poor old Jenk one day. But, of course, I don't want to quarrel with him." Roy ascended the staircase and entered the room, to find the secretary bending over a big volume in the Greek character; and, as he looked up smiling, the boy felt that his tutor was about the least quarrelsome-looking personage he had ever seen. "Rather a long half-hour, Roy, is it not?" he said. "Yes, sir; I'm very sorry. My mother met me as I was coming across the garden, and talked to me, and I could not leave her in such trouble."