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It still wanted an hour or two before supper-time, and still Boadicea was from home.

Aunt Caroline, feeling a little anxious, but not allowing herself to appear so, or her anxiety to interfere with the usual arrangements of the day, had gone — as was her wont — to worry Uncle Jasper in his study.

She always did this between tea-time and supper, because, supper being a cold meal at Old Manor Farm, she always got it ready earlier in the day, and had therefore plenty of leisure between the hours of four o’clock and 6:30. Having nothing more important to do at that hour, she invariably took her darning basket up to the museum, and sat there darning socks and plaguing Uncle Jasper with countless interruptions, just when he was most deeply immersed in his books.

She worried him with every subject she could possibly think of: Susan’s misdeeds and Boadicea’s education, and lately it had been Cousin Barnaby’s selfishness and greed.

We must, however, do Aunt Caroline the justice to say that she did not greatly upset Uncle Jasper. Her talk was so garrulous and so constant that after the first few minutes he paid no more heed to it; he could go on reading perched upon his library steps whilst her voice went droning on from below.

“You, Jasper, have got to put your foot down!”

She had made this remark once or twice before this afternoon whilst she sat darning Cousin Barnaby’s pink and white striped socks; but Uncle Jasper, still absorbed in his reading, did not look up from his book. She took up her large cutting-out scissors and banged the metal gluepot persistently with it, until Uncle Jasper was bound to notice her.

“Yes, yes, my dear,” he said gently. “What is it?”

“You must put your foot down!” she reiterated very slowly, accentuating every syllable as she spoke. And Uncle Jasper, who always perched cross-legged on the library steps, quickly uncrossed his legs and put his right foot meekly down beside the left.

In doing so he lost his balance, and his book slid off his thin knees right down on to the floor with a great clatter and the raising of a cloud of dust.

Uncle Jasper quietly came down the steps, picked up his book, and once more mounted up to his perch, whilst Aunt Caroline went on vigorously darning a white stocking, not for a moment thinking of assisting poor Uncle Jasper, and talking volubly at him all the time.

“Barnaby Crabtree,” she said, “has fastened on us like a hungry leech. Lord, how that man eats! Three large cups of tea this afternoon, and tea at six shillings a pound! I tell ye, Jasper, that if he does not leave this house soon you will have to carry me out of it in my coffin. . . . The best bedroom, too . . . and five weeks to-day since he came. . . . But now that Olive has come to stay with us,” she added, more loudly and impressively, “Barnaby has got to go!”

“Yes, my dear,” said Uncle Jasper, who had not the remotest idea what his worthy wife was talking about.

Promptly did Aunt Caroline bring up one of her most regretful sighs.

“What I have had to endure in life,” she said, “through marrying a man who spends his days on the top of a ladder, no other woman can possibly know. If I had only married Ebenezer Toogood, who wanted me at the same time as you did, Jasper, I shouldn’t have had the whole of an entire household upon my shoulders, for Ebenezer did have other thoughts besides beetles and lizards. . . . And now,” she went on with her usual irrelevance, “here’s Barnaby Crabtree, whom you asked to come for three days and who has been here five weeks!”

The idea of Uncle Jasper asking anybody to stay anywhere or to do anything except leave him alone was distinctly humorous, but Aunt Caroline abhorred humour when household matters were being talked about — so she ignored it sedulously.

“But,” she said, “I have quite made up my mind. Barnaby has got to go. . . . not to-day, because it is too late to order a chaise, though I doubt not but Sir Baldwin is so polite he would allow the old toad to travel in his coach. . . . No, no; I had forgotten — Sir Baldwin’s coach has left already. . . . But no matter. To-morrow I can order Hickmott’s trap to take Barnaby as far as Dover, and from there he can journey by stage coach to London. I’ll pack all his things — glad shall I be to be rid of him, and—”

But here Aunt Caroline’s flow of eloquence was interrupted, not by Uncle Jasper, who never interrupted anybody, nor yet by Olive, who was still in the dumps up in her room, but by no other person than Barnaby Crabtree himself, whose stentorian voice was heard ringing from end to end of the house.

“I won’t have it!” he shouted from the top of the stairs, and he could then be heard coming down them as fast as his fat legs would carry his fat body. “I won’t have it, I tell you! . . . Cousin Caroline! . . . Cousin Caroline!” he shouted still more loudly. “Where in thunder are you?”

Aunt Caroline hastily put down her darning; I do believe that her hands were trembling, and that her round face had become very white. Uncle Jasper even had been startled by all that shouting, and, as usual when he was startled, he dropped the book which he had been reading, and then meekly ran down the library steps to fetch it.

He got the book, and was about to remount the steps again with it when Aunt Caroline simply darted across the room, heedless of eggs and stuffed lizards, that flew about in all directions as her voluminous bombazene skirt knocked them down off tables and chairs.

Just as Uncle Jasper put his foot on the fifth step of his ladder she caught him by his white-stockinged ankle and held on to it with all her might.

“Jasper,” she whispered eagerly, “Jasper, come down — now is the time to put your foot down!” But Uncle Jasper, with the strength of the weak and the courage of intense terror, gave a vigorous jerk with his leg. His shabby buckled shoe remained in Aunt Caroline’s hand, and he scrambled helter-skelter up the steps and once more perched himself on the very top, for all the world like a frightened crow.

Before Aunt Caroline could say another word the door of the museum was kicked open by a heavy foot and Barnaby Crabtree stood upon the threshold.

“Caroline,” he shouted as he entered the room and marched across it with a short, shuffling stride, “have you sworn to be the death of me? Have you and Jasper entered into a conspiracy to murder me? I ask because if this goes on much longer you will have to carry me out of this house in my coffin.”

He now turned and faced Aunt Caroline, wrath expressed in every line of his wide, flat face. She was standing at the foot of the library steps, still holding Uncle Jasper’s buckled shoe in her hand. She would not have owned it to herself for worlds, but as a point of fact her heart was beating furiously and her knees were shaking under her. She was so mightily afraid of Barnaby Crabtree.

With the buckled shoe she tapped Uncle Jasper’s legs, making him very fidgety and uncomfortable. He very nearly lost his balance, and twice his knuckles caught a rap from the shoe when he was rubbing his shins.

Barnaby Crabtree certainly looked very formidable. He was so very fat and big and seemed to take up such a lot of room, and he had a way of rolling his pale-coloured, fishlike eyes which gave his countenance a very weird expression.

Uncle Jasper gave a timid little cough as a preliminary to more lengthy speech. I suppose that he had suddenly made up his mind to this, because all the while that he was silent Aunt Caroline kept on rapping his shins with the shoe. And his shins were getting very sore.

“We should be very sorry, Barnaby,” he said, “to . . . hem . . if we were to lose you . . . hem. . . . Amicum perdere est . . .”

“Don’t quote that abominable Latin, Jasper!” thundered Barnaby in deafening tones. “Do you want to see me go into hysterics?”

“God forbid, Barnaby!” ejaculated Uncle Jasper meekly. “That would indeed be a horrible sight.”

“But what’s the matter now, Cousin Barnaby?” asked Aunt Caroline, with sudden resolution.

“What’s the matter, ma’am?” retorted Mr. Crabtree. “Everything’s the matter. Noise and bustle, ma’am. Why did I come here, pray?”

“Ego cogito,” sighed Uncle Jasper, “I am wondering.”

“I came here for peace and quiet,” continued Cousin Barnaby sternly, “and now that young person whose cap is always awry tells me that I am to be turned out of my room for your niece.”

“Susan told you rightly, Cousin Barnaby,” said Caroline, who was striving to look dignified, and ill-succeeding, poor dear, seeing that she was fidgetting nervously with Uncle Jasper’s leg in one hand and his shoe in the other. “The room is wanted for my niece, Lady Jeffreys, who will make a stay here for a few days.”

“A few days — a few days, ma’am? And who asked her, pray?”

“My niece comes when she likes, Cousin Barnaby. She asked herself this time.”

“Dux femina facti . . .” murmured Uncle Jasper feebly.

“Don’t do that, Jasper,” roared Mr. Crabtree, “you give me the gripes.”

“Dandelion roots chopped up fine,” suggested Aunt Caroline, “with a dash of sweet oil . . .”

“Ugh! don’t come round doctoring me, ma’am. . . . I tell you that all I want is peace. . . I find your niece a disturbing person. . . . The sooner she goes the better I shall like it. . . . And you can tell her so if you like. . . . I don’t care. I came here for peace. Tell that to your niece, ma’am — and peace at all costs must I have.”

He went over to the sofa, and before you could guess what was his purpose he had calmly swept all the specimens on to the floor, and they rolled off and scattered about in all directions, whilst two eggs were smashed into little pieces. In a moment Uncle Jasper had dropped his book and was running helter-skelter down the library steps.

“Heavens, Barnaby,” he ejaculated, “a valuable pair of eggs! . . . Owl’s eggs!”

He was down on his knees, poor dear, trying to rescue the scattered specimens and examining the damage done to his precious eggs. But Barnaby Crabtree sat himself down placidly upon the sofa.

“Then,” he said coolly, “I ask you, Jasper, in the name of commonsense, is a begad sofa the proper place for owl’s eggs?”

“Put your foot down, Jasper,” whispered Aunt Caroline close to Uncle Jasper’s ear. “Now is your time.”

“Yes, my dear,” replied he.

He was then lying flat down on the floor trying to arrive at a pair of blown frogs that had slid along the polished floor to an impossible spot under some heavy piece of furniture, right out of his reach. It was of course difficult for him in that position to put his foot down, seeing that both his feet, one shod and the other only encased in white cotton stocking, were quivering in mid-air, the length of his shins from the floor.

“Don’t go fidgetting round me like that, Jasper,” said Barnaby Crabtree irritably. “Can’t you leave those things alone?”

“I am only collecting the scattered remains, Barnaby,” said Uncle Jasper, struggling back to a more convenient position, “disjecta membra. . . .”

“Don’t do that,” thundered Mr. Crabtree.

“No, Barnaby.”

And with this last meek little saying, Uncle Jasper finally relinquished all hope of being able to put his foot down, and I must say that Aunt Caroline made no grave effort in that direction either. At the back of her mind there lingered the thought that Barnaby Crabtree was “not strong”—such a favourite expression on the tongue of a motherly woman who has not a large family on whom to bestow the superfluous abundance of her kind heart.

Barnaby Crabtree had given Aunt Caroline so much trouble in the past five weeks that he had spent in the house, she had dosed him so persistently, and — as she thought — so successfully, with her home-made medicaments, that she took a great interest in his general health, and, believe me, she would greatly have missed him if he had suddenly made up his mind to go.

Therefore to-day, as on all previous days, Mr. Crabtree was left the master of the situation, and of the household. Aunt Caroline had been rendered anxious by the state of his health, which verged on apoplexy every time that he lost his temper, and Uncle Jasper had retreated to his perch, tired of strife, of noise, and of distractions, which took his mind away from the pleasing realms of romance where owls and bats reign supreme and frogs and lizards are of paramount importance. Cousin Barnaby lay back on the sofa, crossed his hands over his protruding middle, and gave a sigh of satisfaction.

“Where is that noisy young female,” he said after awhile, when Aunt Caroline, having given up all thoughts of further strife, had quietly resumed her darning, “whose name sounds like a cold in the head?”

“Boadicea?” suggested Aunt Caroline.

“Now I ask you in the name of commonsense,” interposed Barnaby irritably, “is that a proper name for a self-respecting young female?”

“She can’t help her name, poor darling,” protested Aunt Caroline.

“She can help spending half her day gyrating on tree-tops and displaying various portions of her person which usually are kept from view.”

You may well imagine how shocked was Aunt Caroline at such language. Her work fell into her lap, and for a moment was quite speechless, after which she merely gasped:

“Really, Barnaby!”

Then she picked up her work again, and for awhile she plied her needle in silence. But, as we all know, silence was not one of Aunt Caroline’s most favoured virtues. Drawing her needle in and out, she became tired of saying nothing, and even Cousin Barnaby’s conversation seemed under the circumstance preferable to no conversation at all.

“In the poultry yard,” she remarked, “Boadicea is my right hand.”

“A hand,” he grunted, “that would be all the better for an occasional wash, ma’am.”

Now, though Aunt Caroline devoted a considerable portion of the day in scolding and admonishing her niece, she could not bear anyone else to criticise either Olive or Boadicea, and now she was very indignant and said hotly:

“Barnaby, you are insulting the child — aye, and you insult me too, seeing that I have brought her up and still see to her hands and complexion. It’s bad enough that you should eat the muffins which I had set aside for the poor child’s tea, and now you must be adding insult to injury.”

“Flagitio additis damnum!” murmured Uncle Jasper to the accompaniment of a short, weary sigh.

“Profane language now,” shouted Cousin Barnaby, who seemed very exasperated. “I cannot endure profane language.”

And he who swore, morning, noon, and night!

“It was Latin, Barnaby,” protested Uncle Jasper mildly.

“Then if you can’t swear in English, Jasper, you’d best leave it alone.”

Then he turned his attention once more to Aunt Caroline.

“There are a few other items, Caroline,” he began, and I can assure you that this time his voice was quite unctuous, like that of a man who has infinite patience under most trying ills, “to which I may call your attention at a more fitting opportunity. For instance, the presence of an animated fly in the raspberry jam this morning, a condiment altogether distasteful in a preserve, and one that no self-respecting housewife should tolerate for a moment.”

“We can’t always help the flies getting into, sweet things this time of year, Cousin Barnaby,” she remarked meekly, “and I try to keep all jam and fruit well covered. It was you, if you remember, who left the raspberry jam uncovered after you had helped yourself at breakfast.”

“It was not I who put the fly into it subsequently. But let that pass. I am not one to complain, and all I want is peace. We’ll let the fly pass, Caroline, but there is another item to which I think your attention should be called, and that is the presence of a parcel of kittens underneath my bed. Now, even your own fault-finding and criticising disposition could not tax me with being the cause of the increase in your cat’s family, nor yet with persuading her to deposit that increase under my bed.”

“Poor pussy! she looks upon your room, Cousin Barnaby, as her special stronghold. The dogs never go in there, and she feels that her little family is safe.”

“Well! I have had the little family swept up into a basket and ordered Susan to deliver them over to Topcoat, with strict injunctions to drown the lot.”

“You haven’t done that, Barnaby?”

“Indeed, I have, and if Topcoat knows his business the drowning will have been effectually done by now.”

“Oh!”

When Aunt Caroline was speechless it meant that she was very indignant indeed. She was quite speechless now, even though a few words did appear to be struggling upwards, out of her heart, and perished in the attempt. She collected all the socks and stockings into her basket, put down her needle and her thimble, and, still unable to speak, she flounced out of the room, to find Susan and Topcoat — Topcoat was the outdoor man, the one who swept the gutters, and kept the yard tidy, and attended to the horse and the waggonette.

If Topcoat had drowned the entire family of kittens without asking Aunt Caroline’s permission and merely at the bidding of Barnaby Crabtree, well then Topcoat should be told that he was no longer a servant of Mr. Hemingford, and that the sooner he and his wife packed up their belongings and engaged themselves as servants to Mr. Crabtree the better pleased would Mrs. Hemingford be.

But then Topcoat had not drowned the entire family of kittens.

Still he got his scolding just the same: it would serve for another time, when he would be sure to deserve it.