Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/110

 During dinner John was unusually gay and vivacious. After dinner he invited James to go for a stroll. Edward begged to be allowed to go too, but John laughed him off.

"There's something particular and peculiar and private that I am going to ask James to do for me," he said, "and nobody else can do it."

So the two brothers, tall strapping fellows, started off into the starlight, through swarms of twinkling fireflies, and became lost to view in the shadows of Pelham Wood.

James had not especially wanted to go for a walk with John, whom he did not like, but being easy-going and prone to follow all lines of least resistance, he had found difficulty in refusing.

"At sea," said John, when he had gotten his pipe going, "when you can't break a man to discipline by straight square dealing you sometimes find it necessary to lay him out with a belaying pin . . . This afternoon, James, the Jackson girl came to see you."

From a state of bored good nature James turned instantly to one of the liveliest anxiety and foreboding.

"She told me," continued John, "how after her father's death you came—and played the good angel."

John's voice was noncommittal, and from this