WILL’S room was a small room opening from his mother’s, which would have been her dressing-room had she wanted such a luxury; and when Mrs. Ochterlony went upstairs late that night, after a long talk with Aunt Agatha, she found the light still burning in the little room, and her boy seated, with his jacket and his shoes off, on the floor, in a brown study. He was sitting with his knees drawn¹ up to his chin in a patch of moonlight that shone in from the window. The moonlight made him look ghastly, and his candle had burnt down, and was flickering² unsteadily in the socket³, and Mary was alarmed. She did not think of any moral cause for the first moment, but only that something was the matter with him, and went in with a sudden maternal⁴ panic to see what it was. Will took no immediate⁵ notice of her anxious questions, but he condescended⁶ to raise his head and prop⁷ up his chin with his hands, and stare up into her face.
 
“Mother,” he said, “you always go on as if a fellow was ill. Can’t one be thinking a little without anything being the matter? I should have put out my light had I known you were coming upstairs.”
 
“You know, Will, that I cannot have you sit here and think, as you say. It is not thinking—it is brooding, and does you harm,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “Jump up, and go to bed.”
 
“Presently,” said the boy. “Is it true that Hugh will go to Oxford⁹, mamma?”
 
“Very likely,” said Mary, with some pride. “Your uncle will see how he has got on with his studies, and after that I think he will go.”
 
“What for?” said Will. “What is the good? He knows as much as he wants to know, and Mr. Small is quite good enough for him.”
 
“What for?” said Mary, with displeasure. “For his education, like other gentlemen, and that he may take his right position. But you are too young to understand all that. Get up, and go to bed.”
 
“I am not too young to understand,” said Wilfrid; “what is the good of throwing money and time away? You may tell my uncle, Hugh will never do any good at Oxford; and I don’t see, for my part, why he should be the one to go.”
 
“He is the eldest¹⁰ son, and he is your uncle’s heir,” said Mary, with a conscious swelling¹¹ of her motherly heart.
 
“I don’t see what difference being the eldest makes,” said Will, embracing his knees. “I have been thinking over it this long time. Why should he be sent to Oxford, and the rest of us stay at home? What does it matter about the eldest? A fellow is not any better than me because he was born before me. You might as well send Peggy to Oxford,” said Will, with vehemence¹², “as send Hugh.”
 
Mrs. Ochterlony, whose mind just then was specially¹³ occupied by Hugh, was naturally disturbed by this speech. She put out the flickering candle, and set down her own light, and closed the door. “I cannot let you speak so about your brother, Will,” she said. “He may not be so quick as you are for your age, but I wish you were as modest and as kind as Hugh is. Why should you grudge¹⁴ his advancement¹⁵? I used to think you would get the better of this feeling when you ceased to be a child.”
 
“Of what feeling?” cried Will, lifting his pale face from his knees.
 
“My dear boy, you ought to know,” said Mary; “this grudge that any one should have a pleasure or an advantage which you have not. A child may be excused, but no man who thinks so continually of himself——”
 
“I was not thinking of myself,” said Will, springing up from the floor with a flush on his face. “You will always make a moral affair of it, mother. As if one could not discuss a thing. But I know that Hugh is not clever, though he is the eldest. Let him have Earlston if he likes, but why should he have Oxford? And why should it always be supposed that he is better, and a different kind of clay?”
 
“I wonder where you learned all that, Will,” said Mary, with a smile. “One would think you had picked up some Radical¹⁶ or other. I might be vexed¹⁸ to see Lady Balderston walk out of the room before me, if it was because she pretended to be a better woman; but when it is only because she is Lady Balderston, what does it matter? Hugh can’t help being the eldest: if you had been the eldest——”
 
“Ah!” said Will, with a long breath; “if I had been the eldest——” And then he stopped short.
 
“What would you have done?” said Mrs. Ochterlony, smiling still.
 
“I would have done what Hugh will never do,” cried the boy. “I would have taken care of everybody. I would have found out what they were fit for, and put them in the right way. The one that had brains should have been cultivated—done something else. There should have been no such mistake as—— But that is always how it is in the world—everybody says so,” said Wilfrid; “stupid people who know nothing about it are set at the head, and those who could manage——”
 
“Will,” said his mother, “do you know you are very presumptuous¹⁹, and think a great deal too well of yourself? If you were not such a child, I should be angry. It is very well to be clever at your lessons, but that is no proof that you are able to manage, as you say. Let Hugh and his prospects²⁰ alone for to-night, and go to bed.”
 
“Yes, I can let him alone,” said Will. “I suppose it is not worth one’s while to mind—he will do no good at Oxford, you know, that is one thing;—whereas other people——”
 
“Always yourself, Will,” said Mary, with a sigh.
 
“Myself—or even Islay,” said the boy, in the most composed way; “though Islay is very technical. Still, he could do some good. But Hugh is an out-of-door sort of fellow. He would do for a farmer or gamekeeper, or to go to Australia, as he says. A man should always follow his natural bent²¹. If, instead of going by eldest sons and that sort of rubbish, they were to try for the right man in the right place. And then you might be sure to be done the best for, mother, and that he would take care of you.”
 
“Will, you are very conceited²² and very unjust,” said Mary; but she was his mother, and she relented as she looked into his weary young face: “but I hope you have your heart in the right place, for all your talk,” she said, kissing him before she went away. She went back to her room disturbed, as she had often been before, but still smiling at Will’s “way.” It was all boyish folly²³ and talk, and he did not mean it; and as he grew older he would learn better. Mary did not care to speculate upon the volcanic²⁴ elements which, for anything she could tell, might be lying under her very hand. She could not think of different developments of character, and hostile individualities, as people might to whom the three boys were but boys in the abstract, and not Hugh, Islay, and Will—the one as near and dear to her as the other. Mrs. Ochterlony was not philosophical²⁵, neither could she follow out to their natural results the tendencies which she could not but see. She preferred to think of it, as Will himself said, as a moral affair—a fault which would mend; and so laid her head on her pillow with a heart uneasy—but no more uneasy than was consistent with the full awakening²⁶ of anxious yet hopeful life.
 
As for Will, he was asleep ten minutes after, and had forgotten all about it. His heart was in its right place, though he was plagued with a very arrogant²⁷, troublesome, restless little head, and a greater amount of “notions” than are good for his age. He wanted to be at the helm of affairs, to direct everything—a task for which he felt himself singularly competent; but, after all, it was for the benefit of other people that he wanted to rule. It seemed to him that he could arrange for everybody so much better than they could for themselves; and he would have been liberal to Hugh, though he had a certain contempt for his abilities. He would have given him occupation suited to him, and all the indulgences which he was most fitted to appreciate: and he would have made a kind of beneficent empress of his mother, and put her at the head of all manner of benevolences, as other wise despots have been known to do. But Will was the youngest, and nobody so much as asked his advice, or took him into consideration; and the poor boy was thus thrown back upon his own superiority, and got to brood upon it, and scorn the weaker expedients²⁸ with which other people sought to fill up the place which he alone was truly qualified²⁹ to fill. Fortunately, however, he forgot all this as soon as he had fallen asleep.
 
Hugh had no such legislative³⁰ views for his part. He was not given to speculation³¹. He meant to do his duty, and be a credit to everybody belonging to him; but he was a great deal “younger” than his boy-brother, and it did not occur to him to separate himself in idea—even to do them good—from his own people. The future danced and glimmered³³ before him, but it was a brightness without any theory in it—a thing full of spontaneous good-fortune and well-doing, with which his own cleverness had nothing to do. Islay, for his part, thought very little about it. He was pleased for Hugh’s sake, but as he had always looked upon Hugh’s good fortune as a certainty, the fact did not excite him, and he was more interested about a tough problem he was working at, and which his uncle’s visit had interrupted. It was a more agitated³⁴ household than it had been a few months before—ere the doors of the future had opened suddenly upon the lads; but there was still no agitation³⁵ under the Cottage roof which was inconsistent with sweet rest and quiet sleep.
 
It made a dreadful difference in the house, as everybody said, when the two boys went away—Islay to Mr. Cramer’s, the “coach” who was to prepare him for his examination, and Hugh to Earlston. The Cottage had always been quiet, its inhabitants thought, but now it fell into a dead calm, which was stifling³⁶ and unearthly. Will, the only representative of youth left among them, was graver than Aunt Agatha, and made no gay din⁸, but only noises of an irritating kind. He kicked his legs and feet about, and the legs of all the chairs, an............