"He is scarcely what I had hoped to find," said Mr. Brown, apologetic still. "Yet his mother was a good-looking woman and----"
"Be hanged to looks," said Mr. Carew. "He'll get on all the better without 'em. And you were never anything to boast of yourself you know. What's his name?"
"Um! John Brown. John Carew-Brown, we'll say. It's a pity it's not John Brown Carew."
"That's a matter that can easily be altered. It can be merely John Carew, if you like, and let the melodious Brown go hang."
"Eh? What does the boy say? What do you say John to changing your name and letting the Brown go hang?"
To Mr. Brown's surprise and consternation, the boy gave an emphatic "No."
"Ah!" said old Mr. Carew, "and how's that? Speak up, John."
"The boys 'ud forget me," said John anxiously, "and I'd have to begin all over agen."
"Thrashing 'em. They know me everywhere about Warrena. I can make 'em all sit up. I don't want to change my name."
"Well said, my lad," he snapped. "I'd not have given a rap for you if you'd have cast your name away as easily as a pinching pair o' boots. Stick to your own name, John, and you'll look all the better after mine."
He waited a bit, eyeing the boy up and down keenly. The thin brown face, with its square determined mouth, quiet grey eyes and high forehead; the sturdy figure, countrified clothes, copper-toed boots, all passed under his scrutiny.
"So you're of the fighting kind?" he asked at last.
"Ah! You never were, you remember, Brown. Things might have been different if you had been."
"John," he said, "your father's going away again to-night. You're my grandson. It may not seem a great matter to you now--but it is, all the same. You stay here. You and I have to take life together, boy--though you're at one end of the ladder and I'm at t'other. Your name's your name right enough, but I want you to be good enough to tack mine on to it, and to do a bit of fighting for mine too if necessary. I've fought for it hard in my day too. And now, John Carew-Brown, we'll have a bit of lunch if it's all the same to you."
Mrs. Bruce was down on her knees caressing tiny Czar violets. Quite early in the morning (before the breakfast things were washed or the beds made) she had slipped on one of Dot's picturesque poppy-trimmed hats and declared her intention of planting the bed outside the study windows thick with these the sweetest-scented of all flowers.