"Yes, I know. But he seems to think I'm about seven instead of nearly seventeen, and talks to me as if I were a very little boy, and--and--and we don't get on." "This sounds very sad, Roy, and I cannot bear to have a fresh trouble now. Your studies are so important to us." Roy reached up to get his arms round his mother's neck, drew her head down, and kissed her lovingly. "And she shan't have any more trouble," he cried. "I'll get wonderfully fond of old Paw." "Roy!" "Master Palgrave Pawson, then; and I'll work at my lessons and classics like a slave. But you will read with me, too, mother?" "As much as you like, my son. Thank you. That has taken away part of my load." "I wish I could take away the rest; but I know you're fidgeting because father hasn't written, and think that something has happened to him. But don't you get fancying that, because there can't be anything. They've only gone after a mob of shoemakers and tailors with a counterpane for flag, and father will scatter them all like dead leaves." "Roy! My boy, these are not your words?" "No, mother; old Ben Martlet said something of that kind to me this morning." "Does he not know, then, how serious it is?" "Serious? What do you mean by serious?" Lady Royland drew a deep breath, and laid her hand upon her side as if in pain. "Why, mother," repeated the boy, "what do you mean by serious?" "This trouble--this rising, my dear. We have had no news, but Master Pawson has had letters from London, and he tells me that what was supposed to be a little petty discontent has grown into a serious revolution." Roy gazed in his mother's troubled face as if he did not quite comprehend the full extent of her words. "Well, and if it has, mother, what then?" "What then, my boy?" "Yes. You've nothing to fidget about. Father is there with his men, and he'll soon put a stop to it all. You know how stern he can be when people misbehave." "My dear Roy, this, I am afraid, is going to be no little trouble that your father can put down with his men. Master Pawson tells me that there is every prospect of its being a civil war." "What! Englishmen fighting against Englishmen?" "Yes; a terrible fratricidal war." "But who has quarrelled, mother? Oh, the king will soon stop it." "Roy, my boy, we have kept you so shut up here in this retired place for home study, instead of parting with you to send you to one of the great schools, that in some things you are as ignorant as I." "Oh, mother!" cried the boy, laughing. "You ignorant! I only wish I were half as learned and clever. Why, father said--"