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Aye vow and protest that ye care na for me,

And whyles ye may lichtly my beauty a wee;

But court na anither, though jokin' ye be,

For fear that she wyle your fancy frae me,

—Robert Burns, “O Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad” (1793)

He had not, he realized, thought of his broken heart for some days. But soon enough he had reason to. For the next time Harry Barbary skipped to the rectory, it was a day before he was expected, and he carried an equally unexpected letter.

“From H. Langworthy, Nobbs Lane, Portsmouth,” the boy read, dragging a none-too-clean finger across each line of the direction.

“That part was plain enough. And so was this ‘Mr. H. Langworthy.’ But from there things went wrong. Doesn’t this look like ‘Ilkey’ to you?

‘Iffley Rectory, Ilkey’? Is there an Ilkey in England, sir? ”

“I have no idea,” he replied with a grimace, fishing out a coin for Mrs. Lamb the postmistress.

“But if there is, I think this letter has been there first. It’s from my uncle, you rapscallion.

And he’s a dry old stick, so there’ll be nothing in it to interest you.

Be off, and see that Mrs. Lamb gets paid. ”

Langworthy spoke no more than the truth—his namesake uncle was in truth a dry old stick—but he neglected to add that letters from Horatio Langworthy the elder were rare enough to be noteworthy in themselves, and he quickly slipped away to his room to read this one.

Because of its detour to the possibly-mythical Ilkey, the letter had taken almost a week to reach him.

But his uncle, at least, after the equivalent of some preliminary throat-clearing, came straight to the point: “You have been away from Portsmouth nearly three weeks, living among strangers, forgetting your career, and no doubt ‘sponging’ upon this new curate acquaintance in a way best known only to yourself. I pass over this in silence but feel it my duty to inform you that the town rings with talk of the resumption of hostilities, and some recently come down from London report that the Commons House daily expects a message from the king on the matter. I need not point out that, should you wish to secure another appointment, it would be more easily done in Portsmouth than in some lubberly, landlocked hamlet. Only send word, and a room shall be got ready for you.”

His uncle had signed the letter after reading him this lecture, only to add a hurried postscript.

“Before I could send this, I received a most surprising call from Miss Mary Pence, accompanied by some ancient companion who, if she had not been wearing a dress, I would not have known for a female. And, yes, Miss Pence assured me she was still Mary Pence and not yet the bride of Captain Colley. After some beating about the bush, in which I said little and let her die away into silence, she at last said she hoped you were well and expressed surprise that she never chanced to see you at the dockyard or walking the ramparts or even at the garrison chapel on a Sunday. I explained that you had been away visiting a new friend met in London and that I did not know when you would return. This brought on more indirection from her until she could discover this ‘new friend’ was male and not female and where he and you could be found, and then, finding no more excuse to linger, she and the ancient companion took themselves off. Make of this what you will. H.L.”

Here were two pieces of news!

Hostilities expected to break out shortly and Mary Pence still unmarried!

Langworthy read the missive again, his uncle’s barbs glancing off him through long practice, but none of the words on the page said anything different the second time.

War imminent.

It had not begun at least while the letter in his hand wandered the kingdom, though perhaps it was that many days nearer.

With a shake of his head, Langworthy set this thought aside for the present because the second loomed larger.

Mary Pence.

Mary Pence, who was still Mary Pence, and not Mary Colley.

She was no fool. With the renewed threat of war, she must have calculated that Langworthy might yet make his fortune; whereas the half pay of one-legged Captain Colley would never be more than that.

For a moment he indulged himself in the vision of arriving back in Portsmouth, commander of a captured French vessel, gold louis d’ors spilling from his pockets to roll and chink in the gutters when he went ashore.

An admiral came forth to greet him with the news that he had made post. Mary waved a handkerchief damp with her tears and wailed, “If only I had chosen you , Horace!”

It was a fantasy so extravagant even he had to laugh. Very well—the odds of his vision coming true were a hundred to one, but they were not nil.

It was clear what his uncle thought he should do: drop everything in Iffley (all his courting of strangers and his sponging upon the unfortunate Rearden) and return at once to Portsmouth, there to court instead influential navy people and the still-single Mary Pence.

Solid, sound advice, even if his uncle’s manner of imparting it grated upon him.

Yes, indeed. Solid, sound advice.

Then why did he still sit here? Why did he not leap up at once, hallooing out the window for Harry Barbary to take a letter by return post? Why did he not fling open the lid to his trunk and begin to toss things in?

“Portsmouth may expect war to break out any moment,” he muttered, “but the fact remains it has not, even here a week later. Would there be any harm in waiting a little longer for the king to address the Commons? If—when—he does, I might return within a day if the announcement comes. And as for Mary…” He stretched his arms up and folded them behind his head to contemplate the ceiling.

As for Mary, if Captain Colley’s luster had faded, and she had jilted him, all the better. But would she not think less of him, her former beau, if he were to fly back and throw himself at her feet? Would she not think it was a case of “O whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad”?

On the one hand, of course, the business which brought him to Iffley was completed.

He had done everything Sebastian Barstow asked of him.

He had seen with his own eyes that Barstow’s widow and Master Bash were safe and relatively secure.

He had gone so far as to make his dutiful offer for Mrs. Sebastian, only to be roundly rejected. He was free to go at any time.

But on the other, knowing Mary’s whims, it would be good to hold himself aloof for a spell, during which his absence might continue to make her heart grow fonder.

This latter conclusion agreed with his own desires, it happened. For if he remained in Iffley, he might continue the pleasant activities of giving navigation lessons and of exacting small measures of revenge upon Mrs. Sebastian for her coldness and ingratitude.

No, no—that wasn’t right. “Revenge” was too strong a word for his little pranks, he decided.

He had merely annoyed her, teased her a little.

Touched the invisible fuse of her temper with the match of his mischief and enjoyed the explosions.

Explosions he liked all the better for her attempts to hide them.

If he were to leave Iffley now, all this must be given up.

And for what? To grovel for Mary Pence’s renewed favor?

If Mrs. Sebastian had wronged him in small ways, Mary Pence had wronged him in the extreme, for which the best vengeance would be to ignore her.

To let her stew in uncertainty. What more could he lose by such a tactic than what he had already deemed lost?

For some minutes the mill-race of his mind ran, with no new revelations breaking upon him, and at last he threw up his hands, rising so suddenly from his chair that it toppled backwards.

“We’ll leave it to fate,” he said aloud.

“Unless the king summons us back to war, I will stay in Iffley until the children’s ball.

Then it’s back to Portsmouth for me. And I’ll tell Rearden as much. ”

That quickly, peace settled upon him again. He bent to snatch the overturned chair from the carpet and set it upright, unconsciously beginning to hum “O Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”

A two-minute walk from the rectory, Mrs. Markham Dere was calling at Iffley Cottage to discuss the selfsame children’s ball, completely unaware of how near she came to losing one of its chief attractions.

“It may be a children’s ball, but I intend it to be a glittering affair,” she declared. “I have told the housekeeper Robson to hire and train a few additional footmen wherever she can find them and to purchase cakes and other refreshments from Oxford.”

Frances clapped her hands, and Maria gasped at the notion of boughten sweets, but Mrs. Barstow regarded her doubtfully.

“Mrs. Dere, it sounds delightful, and we very much look forward to it, but are you certain you must go to all this trouble when we have already informally gathered twice to practice?”

Mrs. Dere drew herself up. “Of course you don’t suppose the ball will only be us and the rectory people, Mrs. Barstow?”

“Won’t it, though?” asked Frances. “For a children’s ball, it’s already more grown-ups than children, but what other children are there in Iffley to invite?”

“Harry Barbary,” suggested Maria with a giggle. “And Jimmy and Anna Cramthorpe.”

But Mrs. Dere turned a quelling eye on the girl, and Maria shrank under it.

“There will be no mixing of classes at the Perryfield children’s ball, Miss Maria.

But as we certainly would like to have at least a few more children than adults, I have spoken with Mrs. Lane and Mrs. Chauncey, and both of them say they would be pleased to summon a few grandchildren—only those well able to dance, naturally—and Mrs. Chauncey also suggested she might accompany us, that I might dance.

Therefore I count at least nineteen or twenty people, depending on the grandchildren, which means we certainly must do the thing right. ”