PART I (continued 4)

“You’re not to look at my drawing—Miss Wade isn’t to look at my drawing!” he cried angrily. “I didn’t say she might look at it!”

The little boy made an ineffectual dash at the paper held above his grasp by the governess.

“Cecil! That’s not at all the way to speak. Just because you can’t stand a little chaff.”

“Don’t, Ces—stop that!” Rose caught hold of him.

“You’re not to laugh at my drawing!” he shrieked.

“I’m not laughing at it. Be quiet this instant.” Rose gave him a hearty shaking, and Cecil burst into tears.

“Good gracious me, what a fuss about nothing! Miss Wade didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Rose rashly asserted.

“Cecil must learn to take a little friendly chaff good-humouredly,” said Miss Wade in a rather vicious-sounding voice. “I’ve noticed before that he’s very touchy—absurdly touchy. What will you do at school, I should like to know, Cecil? To fly out like that just because one doesn’t think everything that you do is perfect. Silly little boy!”

Cecil, who had been sobbing comparatively calmly after his mother’s brief and vigorous ministrations, was screaming, quivering, and stamping with renewed passion by the end of Miss Wade’s speech.

“I never said you might look at my picture! It isn’t fair—you’ve no right to—pig, pig—I hate you.... It isn’t badly drawn; I drew it like that on purpose. I spelt ‘Pug’ wrong on purpose.... I——”

“Cecil, you know that’s not true——”

“Oh, shut up,” cried Rose with sudden anger, turning on the governess.

“Mrs. Aviolet!”

“Well, can’t you see he doesn’t know what he’s saying?”

But this was as disastrous as any inspiration of Miss Wade’s.

“I do know what I’m saying.... It is true.... I drew it badly for fun.... I can draw much better than any one.... I can——”

The nursery door opened again and Lady Aviolet came in.

“What’s this disgraceful noise? I heard you from the garden, Cecil.”

“He’s a very naughty boy indeed, I’m sorry to say.”

Rose picked up the struggling, sobbing Cecil in her strong arms and carried him bodily into the next room, where she threw him on the bed.

“Don’t you stir from there, now,” she panted.

She stood for a moment by the door, and saw him rolling round, his head buried in the pillow, before she left him, closing the door behind her.

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” she helplessly declared.

“Neither have I,” Miss Wade admitted. “I’ve never thought him a passionate child. And all about nothing, as you might say!”

“Is this ridiculous drawing business the only thing that’s gone wrong? Was there really nothing else?” Rose demanded.

“Nothing.”

They looked at one another in a common dismay.

“I should like to hear the whole story,” said Lady Aviolet, determination evident in her deliberate selection of a chair for herself.

Miss Wade repeated the trivial episode, and its totally disproportionate climax.

“He was just angry because you laughed at him?”

“I suppose so. Not that I should think so much of that, Lady Aviolet, in a child that isn’t used to other children and has never learnt to give and take, or to tease and be teased—but the temper! The rage!! The expressions he used!!! And worst of all, the readiness to say what isn’t true. It’s the old, old failing, you know. Declaring that he’d done it badly on purpose, you know—his mother heard him.”

“He didn’t know what he was saying,” Rose repeated roughly.

“That makes it so much the worse, my dear,” her mother-in-law unexpectedly remarked. “It’s almost as though the poor child lied by instinct, not caring what nonsense he may be talking.”

“I thought him nearly cured, too,” said Miss Wade mournfully. “I’m afraid—I really am afraid, Lady Aviolet—that I’ve failed with Cecil. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to say such a thing of a pupil, but I do certainly feel that, except as regards mere book-learning, he’s made little or no progress since I’ve had him. The truth is, there have been too many interruptions—a divided authority—” she glanced resentfully at Cecil’s mother.

Rose, with her arms akimbo, stood staring back at her with brooding, lowering gaze.

“I’m sure it’s very honest of you, Miss Wade, to tell us what you feel, like that,” said Lady Aviolet. “It’s not your fault, I feel sure. It’s just what I’ve always said: Cecil is a spoilt little boy—yes, my dear Rose, he is—and school is what he requires. He doesn’t know how to stand being laughed at, he doesn’t speak the truth, and now he’s flying into these naughty rages. It’s more than time that he left home.”

“Sorry though I am to say it, I quite agree with you, Lady Aviolet. I should like to look out for another situation at the end of the month, if you please.”

Thus Miss Wade, very red, and with compressed lips.

“Well, well”—Lady Aviolet rose—“we’re in no hurry to settle that, Miss Wade, if you’re not. But I certainly do think, after this, that there can be no question about delaying school any longer. We shall see what Ford says.”

“Seeing what Ford said” was with Lady Aviolet the inevitable concomitant to any suggestion. Before he came home again, however, Rose took the law into her own hands.

She announced abruptly that she was going down to Hurst.

“But, my dear, Ford has already been there. He can tell you all about it.”

Why on earth couldn’t one be allowed to take any step without this eternal, relentless, and yet bloodless, opposition, Rose thought angrily.

“Well, I’m going just the same. I want to see it for myself.”

“Very well, my dear. I suppose you will make an appointment with the headmaster—I think his name is Lambert. I believe he has a particularly charming wife, who does a great deal for the boys.”

“Yes.”

“I will come with you, if you like. I should like to see the place.”

Rose looked at her mother-in-law with candid disapproval. “I’d rather not, thank you. I hope you won’t think me a pig,” she added with an effort.

Lady Aviolet did not say that she thought Rose a pig. She made an unsmiling gesture of submission.

“Just as you prefer. I shall get plenty of opportunities later on, I hope, when the little chap is settled there.”

“I thought Henrietta Lucian could come with me,” said Rose.

“The doctor’s sister? If you wish it, my dear, no doubt she will be quite ready to do so.”

“I like her very much,” said Mrs. Aviolet aggressively.

“Do you, my dear? Let me know when you want to go, so as not to clash with any plans. The Marchmonts are coming over to lunch one day next week, I hope.”

Rose gloomily undertook not to interfere with the visit of the Marchmonts, inexpressibly dull as she had always felt them to be. She made an appointment with the headmaster at Hurst, and obtained the companionship of Miss Lucian on her expedition. She was fond of Henrietta Lucian, both for a certain terse humour that was entirely lacking in the society of Squires, and for her matter-of-fact acceptance of little Cecil’s foible, and robust affection for him. Rose found it a relief to have her intention of visiting Hurst taken for granted, without reference to its entailing any future decision. She felt able to put into words a fact that had hitherto vexed her spirit almost too deeply for utterance.

“You know they’ve managed to make Ces perfectly wild to come to this place.”

Rose’s “they” was always unmistakable.

“It’s natural.”

“Of him? I know it is. But it makes it much harder for me to stick to what I’ve said about his not going.”

“Do you mean to stick to it, then?”

“Well, honestly, I don’t know. I’ll see what this blooming place is like. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d ever even think of school for him, after all I’ve said against it, I’d have called you no better than a liar. But I’ve had to own that I don’t seem to be making a great hand of keeping him away. I thought at first that if I had him to myself, it’d be better, but when we were in London, him and me, it wasn’t really a great success. He wasn’t well, for one thing, and he was always talking about the games and animals and things at Squires, poor lamb. And that governess, that Miss Wade, hasn’t done him any good, for all her rotten little books on education. She hasn’t cured him of telling fibs.”

“Poor little man!”

“Nothing seems to do him any good, that way. I know they’ve told him a whole lot about God, and how He hates lies, and always knows when people aren’t speaking the truth, and so on and so forth. I never could stuff him up with all that, myself, not knowing much about it, or caring either.”

“It might be an incentive to Cecil to speak the truth. I shouldn’t discourage any motive that might help him.”

“I wouldn’t for the world,” said Rose. “Only it doesn’t, you see. Make any difference, I mean. I can’t see that he cares a hang whether God minds his telling lies or not. I don’t believe he knows when he’s telling them.”

“It’s probably a bad habit, like any other. He’ll either grow out of it, or leave it off when he finds out for himself that the game isn’t worth the candle. School might teach him that, you know.”

Miss Lucian’s arguments might not be original, but Rose received them thankfully enough in her new perplexity.

The pleasant, spacious building called Hurst made a favourable impression on her, and she met Mr. Lambert without any of the repressed hostility that the mere mention of his name had always roused in her at Squires.

He was a tall, curly-haired man with an agreeable manner, much younger than Rose had expected him to be. She was naïvely pleased and flattered because he spoke to her almost at once of “Cecil,” as though he felt an interest in the boy sufficiently great to have remembered his name.

They were shown the class-rooms, dining-room, dormitories, gymnasium, the Chapel, and the playing-fields, and finally taken through a red baize door beyond which Mrs. Lambert had her drawing-room.

“Let me introduce my wife, Mrs. Aviolet and Miss Lucian.”

Mrs. Lambert also looked younger than Rose had expected her to look, and her round, freckled face was pretty and good-humoured, with big blue eyes glowing like dark jewels under an open forehead and curling brown hair.

She talked very freely and enthusiastically about the school, and her warmth of manner drew Rose towards her very strongly. She listened eagerly to Mrs. Lambert’s practical assurances.

“They really do get enough to eat, you know. I can so well understand any mother feeling dreadful about letting her boy go all by himself to a strange place—but truly, Mrs. Aviolet, I promise you they’re well looked after. My own little boy is in the school, you know. You shall see him, and then you can tell whether he’s a good advertisement.” Her gay, jolly laugh was justified by the appearance of the boy, a healthy, happy-looking specimen, who ran into the room, shook hands, and then burst out with some eager petition to his father.

“Stuff for marking the tennis-court? Of course you can, old chap. Come along and we’ll find it—if Mrs. Aviolet will excuse us? But I daresay you’d like a talk with my wife.”

Mrs. Lambert nodded. “Please do let’s, Mrs. Aviolet. I find it’s such a help with the boys if I can say that I know their mummies a little bit. And from the other point of view, too, of course it helps one to understand a boy if one has a talk with the parents.”

“May I come and see the tennis-court?” said Miss Lucian, and she rose and went out with Mr. Lambert and his son.

Mrs. Lambert sat silent for a moment, looking expectantly at Rose.

At last she said gently: “If you do settle to trust us with your boy, I do want you to feel happy about him. I’ll write to you myself every few days, just at first, and tell you how he’s settling down. It’s wonderful how quickly they get accustomed to it all. Is Cecil fond of games?”

“Yes, but he’s not good at them, yet.”

“That’s sure to come later. He’s an only child, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So’s mine. I do feel it’s a drawback to them, poor darlings, but at least it’s better for a boy than for a girl. They do get to school.”

Rose, preoccupied with a newly born impulse, according to her usual policy, made no effort to disguise her wandering attention.

Mrs. Lambert looked slightly perplexed.

“Won’t you ask me anything you like?” she said at last. “Please don’t think I shan’t understand. I shall, really. It always seems to me so hard for the mothers.”

Rose roused herself suddenly, her decision taken at the same moment.

“You are kind. I never imagined you’d be in the least like this. The fact is I’ve always been dead against school for Cecil, at all. He’s not like other children, in a way. I don’t mean that he’s wanting, you know,” she added hastily.

“I never supposed you did! But what is it, exactly?”

“He doesn’t speak the truth,” said Rose curtly.

There was a pause.

Then Mrs. Lambert nodded her head. Her expression, though graver, still remained sympathetic and full of optimistic cheerfulness.

“Well, that’s a bad fault, of course, and one’s always sorry to see it. But, of course, we’ve had boys like that before. It’s quite a common thing, in fact.”

“You won’t tell your husband, will you? It doesn’t seem fair to Cecil, somehow.”

“Very well. But I can’t help being glad you’ve told me, Mrs. Aviolet. It makes it so much easier to help the poor little fellow if one knows where the weak spot is. My husband will find it out, of course, but I promise not to tell him a word beforehand, though—honestly—I think it would be much the best thing if you’d tell him yourself.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I’ve been worried to death about the whole thing,” said Rose with violence. “Everybody talking as though Ces was the worst and most wicked child in England, just because his father married me.”

Mrs. Lambert ignored the embarrassing personality. “But heaps of children tell fibs—some of them go on till they’re quite big. I’ve known cases, myself——”

“Yes,” Rose said doubtfully. “It isn’t absolutely an unheard of thing, after all. And they do get cured, don’t they?”

“Oh, but of course. It’s just a fault, like any other. I’m sure it can be overcome, if one’s patient and hopeful. And especially in the case of such a young child as your Cecil.”

“And what do you think about school for him? Have you had boys like that before?”

“Yes,” declared Mrs. Lambert stoutly. “Lots of little boys tell stories, if they’re constitutionally timid, or if they’ve been left to servants too much. And Will—my husband—would never be hard on a boy, you know. He thoroughly disbelieves, and so do I, in frightening children.”

“What would he do, then, with a boy who didn’t speak the truth?”

“Well, I don’t ever interfere in matters of school discipline, you know, but I’m pretty sure he’d do every single thing to try and make it easy for the boy to own up. And if he’d actually told a lie, and Will had to punish him, he’d talk to him and tell him why it was. Even quite untruthful children cure themselves in a very short time if they’re put on their honour, and trusted, we’ve always found. It’s a horrid fault, but they outgrow it fairly young, as a rule.”

There was an almost casual assurance about Mrs. Lambert’s point of view that brought a sense of relief, a conviction of having monstrously exaggerated her problem, to Rose.

“They always do outgrow it, in the end?”

Mrs. Lambert laughed a little, gently. “Oh, I think so, don’t you? The moral sense develops, later on ... and, besides, to put it on the lowest ground, they soon find that fibbing isn’t worth while. They always get found out, bless their hearts, most of them do it so badly!”

“Cecil’s stories are often very silly ones—things that no one could be taken in by, seriously.”

“That’s just it!” the schoolmaster’s wife declared briskly. “It shows they aren’t really deceitful, doesn’t it? And I do honestly think the school atmosphere is a thoroughly healthy one, you know. They spend a tremendous amount of time in the open air and they get keen about the games, and they really haven’t much time for naughtiness!”

In a vague way, that she did not seek to analyze, it comforted Rose to hear the reiteration of that trivial adjective, “naughty.”

In Mrs. Lambert’s smiling mouth, it seemed to denude Cecil’s characteristic of some sinister significance that Rose was not able to specify.

“I’ve been worried to death about him,” she again admitted. “Have you truly known boys like that before?”

“My dear Mrs. Aviolet—but of course! I think, between ourselves, that an exaggerated view is taken of that sort of thing. I don’t mean for a minute that truth isn’t the most important thing in the world—of course it is—but quite a lot of children really don’t seem to understand the value of truth while they’re quite little. It all comes later, and I do think boys are so good for one another in that way—the code of honour being so strict, you know, and so much esprit de corps amongst themselves. We had a boy here once—quite a little fellow—with exactly your Cecil’s failing. As a matter of fact, he was half Portuguese, and we don’t take any foreigners at all now—this was before my husband had the school—so perhaps you couldn’t expect quite the same training.... But he was much worse than your little boy can possibly be, I’m sure. He was deceitful, poor little chap—what one could only describe as an artful child.”

“Cecil isn’t that,” Rose interjected. “Go on.”

“Well, he came very near to being expelled in disgrace. Two or three of the boys had been up to some mischief or other—something rather worse than usual—but they’d all have got off lightly if it hadn’t been that this little chap told lie upon lie, trying to cover up his own traces, you know, and incriminating others right and left. We only got at the truth after endless difficulty, when he’d betrayed himself by half a dozen contradictions. (After all, he was only eleven years old.) Well, to cut a long story short, he’d have been sent away if it hadn’t been for my husband. Will was his form-master, and he begged the Head to give him another chance, and said he’d be personally responsible for the boy’s future good behaviour. You understand, it was the lies he’d told that made one so anxious—not the mischief, which was nothing very bad in itself. His parents were in Brazil, and he was in charge of an uncle who was very strict, and altogether one felt dreadfully sorry for the boy. So he was allowed to stay on.”

“And it answered?” said Rose breathlessly.

“It answered. Of course, he went through a very rough time, poor little lad. You see, the other boys necessarily knew what had happened, more or less, and boys aren’t very merciful to that sort of thing, I’m afraid. They practically sent him to Coventry for the rest of the term—one couldn’t wonder, altogether. But it was the turning point in that boy’s life, I do honestly believe. Will kept an eye on him, and he told me it was piteous to see the poor child trying to redeem his character, and prove himself trustworthy. You see, it was a practical demonstration of the fact that a liar is something hateful to his fellow beings. It might not have been the very highest grounds for reformation, but, honestly, it succeeded where pretty nearly everything else had failed.”

“What happened to him afterwards?”

“He got a scholarship, went to Eton, and did extremely well. And I can answer for it, out of my personal knowledge, that even before he left Hurst, he’d overcome that tendency absolutely. He was as truthful as any other boy. Will talked the whole thing out with him in the end, and traced it to his father having frightened him with punishments and threats as a mere baby, till the poor child had absolutely got into the habit of fibbing whenever he thought any one was going to be angry with him. I’ve made a long story of it, I’m afraid, but that was far and away the worst case I’ve ever known, and I’m quite sure Cecil’s mere bad habit isn’t anything like that now, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s more like a—a sort of trick, with Ces. Quite meaningless, sometimes—and silly. He isn’t what I’d call deceitful, a bit. I can’t explain——”

“But, Mrs. Aviolet, I don’t think you need explain any further. I understand—truly I do. I’ve had heaps of experience with boys, after all, and I know the kind of thing you mean quite well. Just silly story-telling—in fact, a bad habit, as I said. I know it must be worrying for you—dreadfully—but, really and truly, it isn’t very uncommon. He’ll get out of it. They all do.”

She spoke with breezy certainty.

“You’ve bucked me up,” said Rose simply. “Thank you very much. I daresay I’ve exaggerated the whole thing in my mind, a bit. Somehow I hadn’t realized that there was any one else with exactly the same trouble.”

“Why, of course there is! It’s a thing we’ve had to contend with again and again. And it always comes right in the end, Mrs. Aviolet.”

The obviously sincere assertion, delivered with Mrs. Lambert’s honest, friendly blue eyes fixed candidly upon Rose’s, brought a sudden warmth to her heart.

“Oh, you are kind! I am glad I’ve seen you,” she cried suddenly. “I’ve been so wretched about the whole thing, and not known what to do. They—my husband’s people—are determined that Ces ought to go through the usual mill—preparatory school, public school, university, and the rest of it. And I’m dead against it. At least I was. But I’m not so sure now about the preparatory school.”

Mrs. Lambert smiled. “Why not try it, as an experiment, and see how it answers before you decide about the rest?”

“That’s just what a great friend of mine said—Lord Charlesbury. You’ve got his boy here, and you know him, don’t you?”

“Yes, he’s charming, isn’t he? So is the boy.”

Easily enough, the schoolmaster’s wife shifted the conversation to less personal topics, Rose obediently following her lead.

They said not another word in direct relation to little Cecil until the moment when Rose and Miss Lucian went away.

Then Mrs. Aviolet squeezed the hand of her hostess in her strong, enveloping grasp and murmured haltingly:

“If he does go anywhere, it’ll be here. I simply can’t tell you what a relief it’s been, seeing you. I hadn’t any idea that you’d be so—human!”

Rose laughed slightly as she said it, with an apologetic note in her laughter, but her brown eyes were oddly misted over. Afterwards she said to Henrietta Lucian:

“I liked that woman—awfully. You don’t know how encouraging she was about Ces. So different to that fool of a Ford, talking about Ces being bullied into telling the truth and kicked into line. I tell you, Ford makes me sick.”

It was not the first time that Mrs. Aviolet had thus heartily apostrophized her absent brother-in-law, and it did not embarrass her to be left without a reply. Her invective, entirely without malice as it was, was always uttered in a tone that assumed complete acquiescence on the part of her hearer.

Henrietta Lucian showed no signs of anything else but acquiescence.

“Have you made up your mind?”

“I suppose I have, really. I don’t know that I shall let on to them, right away. They’re quite aggravating enough without me giving them the chance of saying ‘I told you so.’ But Ces isn’t getting any better with me, and that seems to dish the idea of my taking him away somewhere, and he’s wild to go to school—and I do believe Mrs. Lambert really would do him good.”

She paused for a moment, then spoke with an effort:

“I say, I don’t believe I ought to have said that about them saying ‘I told you so.’ God knows they’re trying enough, but I don’t believe they would mock at me for changing. The old people really do want what they think is best for Cecil, and that’s all they think of. Besides, they never have said ‘I told you so’—although goodness knows I’ve given them every opportunity, the number of times I’ve had to eat humble pie.”

“I see. No, I’m sure they wouldn’t say anything like ‘I told you so.’ For one thing,” Miss Lucian observed drily, “they might think it rather bad form.”

They both laughed.

The Aviolets did not say “I told you so” when Rose at last, in tones truculent rather than submissive, informed them that she approved of Hurst as a preparatory school for Cecil. They calmly and agreeably accepted the announcement as a matter of course.

“And what about yourself, my dear? Have you any plans?” amiably inquired Lady Aviolet. “Can you put up with the dullness of the country, while Cecil is away?”

“It isn’t so much the dullness——” began Rose, and then checked herself.

Lady Aviolet overlooked the obvious implication. “We hope, Sir Thomas and I, that you’ll still look upon this as your headquarters, and of course spend the holidays here with dear little Cecil.”

“Thank you,” said Rose gloomily.

To herself, she thought that the Aviolets could well afford to be gracious. She, the boy’s mother, had failed, and they were to be allowed their own way in the bringing up of Cecil.

XII

A few weeks after Cecil had been taken to Hurst by Ford Aviolet, who quietly appropriated the duty, Rose came to see Miss Lucian.

She had announced it to be a farewell visit before her return to Ovington Street.

“I couldn’t possibly go on slacking about at Squires, the way they all do,” she declared. “It was bad enough, even with Ces there, but it’s been perfectly awful since he went. Nothing but Pug and the garden, and the garden and Pug, till I’m sick of the sound of them both!”

“So you’re going to London?”

“Yes. I can help Uncle Alfred, I daresay, and I’m going to try and find some work. Of course, I shall come back to Squires in the holidays, so as to be with Ces. They’ve been very decent about that, I must say.”

“And don’t they mind your going away?”

“Not a bit, I shouldn’t think. I’m no asset to them,” Mrs. Aviolet declared frankly. “And they’ll get quite enough of me in the holidays.”

“Couldn’t you come here for a few days before you go?” said Miss Lucian.

Rose was like a joyfully surprised child, in her acceptance. “Oh, I’d love to! How kind of you to want me. You’ll hardly believe it, but I haven’t once been to stay with any one, except relations, since we got to England. I have some friends, people we’d known in Ceylon, retired, with a house at Bexhill, and they always used to say I must go and stay with them when I came home, but they never asked me, after all. I wrote to Mrs. Judd, too, from Squires, but she only wrote back and said how nice it must be for me to be with Jim’s people, and wasn’t Squires quite a show place, or some rot of that kind. Not a word about me going to them.”

“Then there was Lord Charlesbury. We were supposed to go and stay with him, last year, but his boy got measles, so we didn’t go. I was frightfully disappointed, but they didn’t seem to care a bit. They never do, about anything.”

Henrietta Lucian shrugged her shoulders. “People are as they’re made, I suppose,” she said philosophically. “Our sort gets much more fun out of life than their sort—though it cuts both ways, too.”

“I’d rather Cecil was like me than like them,” said Rose with decision.

“I quite agree with you. Well, tell me about Cecil. How’s he getting on?”

Miss Lucian’s hearty interest in Cecil always roused in his mother all the passionate gratitude that the entirely unenthusiastic bestowal of material benefits from the Aviolets failed to evoke.

“I’ve had such nice letters from that kind Mrs. Lambert. She’s been so good about writing, and she says he’s getting on very well, and seems thoroughly well and happy. And his own letters say he’s happy, too.”

“I’m so glad!” Miss Lucian ejaculated, with the utmost sincerity.

“I suppose it’s much more fun for him to be with other boys. Only I wish he was better at games.”

“Isn’t he good at them?”

“No, not a bit, and the odd thing is that he really wants to be, dreadfully—and yet it’s the work of the world to get him to try.”

“He’s so active—I can’t imagine Cecil not good at games.”

Rose shook her head. “He won’t try,” she repeated. “He can’t throw a ball properly, and when we were first at Squires, his grandfather tried to show him how, but Ces just wouldn’t learn. I think he didn’t like to be seen doing it the wrong way, and so he wouldn’t ever do it at all. But to hear him talk, you’d think he was mad about cricket or anything like that, and ready to practise his bowling all day.”

“Perhaps he’ll be good at football.”

“Perhaps,” said Rose doubtfully. “Jim was good at games.”

“Yes, I remember. Far better than Ford ever was, but then Ford has always cared more for other things. He isn’t really very strong, physically, is he?”

“He looks weedy enough,” said Mrs. Aviolet contemptuously. “He never offered to teach Ces anything about games, and he never plays any himself, except tennis, and he always looks superior when people go on about golf and things—and yet he sneers at poor little Ces for being no good. It was partly him, I think, that made Ces so tiresome about not trying to learn.”

“That’ll be different, at school. He’ll do as the others do, and there are sure to be plenty of beginners. He won’t be afraid of being laughed at, when he isn’t the only one. Maurice thinks, you know, that it’s that fear of being laughed at that’s at the bottom of all Cecil’s troubles.”

“I know what you mean,” said Rose rather gloomily. “His story-telling. There hasn’t been a word about that, in any of Mrs. Lambert’s letters. I’m sure I hope there’ll never have to be.”

Mrs. Lambert, indeed, writing intimately of Cecil’s physical welfare, touched very little upon other subjects.

Rose had left Squires, and gone to pay her promised visit to the Lucians, before she received confirmation of the fear that had all the time been lurking at her heart.

At Squires, her farewells had been complicated by a slight tinge of remorse that she could make them no more cordial.

“Well, good-bye, my dear. We shall expect you for the holidays, remember. I don’t want to hurry you, but Tucker is at the door, and you must allow for the hill.”

Rose had heard that information bestowed, identically worded, upon every departing guest that she had ever seen at Squires.

“Good-bye. Thanks awfully for having had me for such ages—and Ces, too. I hope I haven’t seemed cross and beastly, very often, but——”

“My dear, please! (Les domestiques!) Ah, here’s Ford.”

“Good-bye, Ford.”

Rose’s tone had involuntarily altered, and her smile, not involuntarily, had vanished.

“Good-bye, Rose. If you want any help about Cecil, don’t hesitate to apply to me.”

Had there been deliberate mockery in his manner, as he made the suggestion? Rose, at least, had felt no doubt upon the point.

Her ejaculatory reply, a sound rather than a distinct syllable, had been the “Tchah!” habitual to Mrs. Smith, as a contemptuous retort, on the rare occasions when words had failed her.

She had shaken hands with Sir Thomas, presented the side of her face for a slight and meaningless contact with that of her mother-in-law, and had thankfully been driven away from the door.

With the Lucians she was at her ease, and very happy until a letter arrived from Mrs. Lambert.

Rose read it with a deepening flush upon her face, and then went straight to Maurice Lucian.

“Look here, you’ve always known about Ces, and you’ve always said, like I do, that there’s a sort of kink in him somewhere that makes him like he is. I’m going to consult you.”

The doctor, seated before his writing-table, swung round in his revolving chair and faced her without speaking. His kind face and profound, intelligent eyes seldom showed either surprise or apprehension. Nevertheless, his expression habitually altered slightly when he spoke to Rose Aviolet. She had come by unperceived degrees to count upon that all-but-imperceptible softening of glance, that greater gentleness in the manner of his speech.

“I want you to read this. It’s from Mrs. Lambert, the schoolmaster’s wife. I told her about Ces before he ever went there.”

The letter was dated from Hurst.

My dear Mrs. Aviolet,

Your boy is very well, and has quite escaped the prevailing cold, which so many of them have had. I am still keeping him on the Extract of Malt, but only as a precaution.

I promised you to write quite fully and frankly, so I will tell you that Cecil hasn’t been quite so bright lately, and we are a little bit afraid, my husband and I, that he has been in some trouble with the other boys. There was some little want of openness over a game that, I’m afraid, almost amounted to cheating, and as it isn’t quite the first time it’s happened with poor little Cecil, he caught it “hot and strong” from the other lads. It didn’t really come to my ears, or to Will’s, in any official way, and he has thought it best not to notice it, but he said that I might write to you.

After the talk we had about Cecil the first time you came down here, I felt I’d much better write frankly, especially as it really hasn’t been what you told me about. As far as I know, he has been quite truthful, but I’m afraid he’s been caught out cheating over games more than once, and you know how dreadfully “down” English boys always are on anything of that kind. It seems such a pity, because Cecil is a dear little boy and gets on well at his lessons.

My own feeling is that, now there’s been an explosion, so to speak, poor little Cecil will have learnt his lesson, and such a thing will never happen again. But I should so much like to hear what you feel about it, and if there is anything you would advise.

Forgive me for worrying you with such a long letter.

Very sincerely yours, Anne Lambert.

“Have you heard from Cecil?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t say a word about anything of that kind. He writes just as usual, not telling me anything, poor darling—boy’s letters never do—but nice and affectionate, and sounding quite happy.”

“Probably by this time he is quite happy again. Have you any idea what kind of thing she—Mrs. Lambert—means, about cheating at games?”

Rose coloured, but faced the doctor unflinchingly as ever.

“Oh, yes. Ces got into trouble about it at Squires once or twice. He isn’t always straight about games, round games, or anything like that, you know, with counters—I’ve seen him shove his counter along with his hand when he thought no one was looking, and the worst of it is that he doesn’t own up when he’s taxed with it. And the same at card games. That wretched little Miss Wade played Beggar-my-Neighbour, or something, with him, and swore he used to peep at the cards. I think she was probably right.”

“When you say that he doesn’t own up,” said Lucian, in his most impersonal and judicial manner, “do you mean that he flatly denies any accusation of cheating?”

“That’s it.”

“When did you first notice anything of that kind?”

“A long time ago, when he was very small, in Ceylon. But I thought then that it was his native ayah’s fault, and it didn’t seem to matter so much. Jim never found it out. He’d have been very angry if he had.”

“I daresay. Was Cecil frightened of his father?”

“Sometimes, but he’s not a cowardly child, you know. When Jim had been drinking, he used to get angry sometimes, but not often with Ces.”

“Was it fear of Jim that made Cecil say what wasn’t true?”

“I don’t think so. He did tell extra untruths, if you know what I mean, when Jim bullied him and tried to catch him out, but as a general rule, it was just the kind of stories that he told at Squires—things he invented, you know.”

“I know.”

Lucian’s voice was rather sorrowful.

“I daresay it sounds like nonsense,” Rose said, “but often and often I’ve thought that Ces couldn’t really help himself. Aren’t some people born colour-blind, so that they can’t distinguish between colours?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes it seems to me that Ces was born without any—any sense of honour at all.”

Lucian nodded, his grave, pitying eyes fixed upon her, and his implied acceptance of her view filled Rose with terror.

“What am I to do for him?” she cried despairingly.

“I wish I could tell you,” said Maurice Lucian very earnestly. “These tendencies can be pathologically treated, and more is being learnt about the right treatment of them every day, but even so, it’s still working in the dark——”

He broke off, as Rose made a violent gesture of impatience.

“I don’t even know what you mean, when you use words like patho—what’s-its-name. I wish to the Lord that I’d ever been properly educated. It’s no wonder that I’m so little use to poor Ces.”

“You’ll be of less use than ever, if you work yourself up like that,” said Lucian suddenly and sharply.

Rose stared at him, arrested mid-way in the flouncing movement that denoted the perturbation of her mind. For a moment she looked angry, and then the fundamental breadth of generosity that lay beneath all her petulance and her lack of control asserted itself.

“I expect you’re right,” she said, suddenly quiet, and smiled at him as though in remorseful atonement for her temper.

The doctor rose abruptly to his feet, and stood with his hands in his pockets, his back against the door. He was as tall a man as Ford Aviolet, but with a broad, bony frame, and the hair on his temples was already grizzled.

He looked down at Rose, who remained in her chair, gazing up at him rather surprised. Although it would not have occurred to her to make use of the words, she was singularly sensitive to atmosphere, and beneath the artificial colour upon her cheeks, there presently surged a warm blush.

Lucian immediately looked away from her. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might marry again?”

“Of course it has,” said Mrs. Aviolet defiantly. “I thought we were talking about Cecil.”

“There was nothing irrelevant in my question,” the doctor retorted caustically, “although perhaps you may reasonably look upon it as an impertinent one. Rose, I know very well that you don’t care for me at present, but isn’t there any chance for me at all?”

“I did hope you wouldn’t ask me,” said Rose piteously.

“I didn’t mean to. I’m not such a fool as to have thought you would listen to me, for a moment. But it’s more than I’d reckoned on, having you in the house like this, and—and caring for you in the way I do.”

“Do you, really?”

“Yes, dear. Almost since that very first day I saw you at Squires.”

He drew a long breath.

“Couldn’t you, Rose?”

Rose Aviolet shook her head, and he saw tears in her brown eyes.

“I shan’t ever marry again. You don’t know what my married life was like. I suppose it’s a most awful thing to own up to, but after I’d been married to Jim six months, I used to think I’d rather be a widow than anything else in the world. He was in love with me, at first anyway, but do you think I was ever anything but a convenience to him? It was what he wanted, when he wanted it, how he wanted it, first and last. Some women may like it, if they’re the door-mat kind, but I’m not. And it wasn’t only that I was very young and self-willed and spoilt, and Jim more or less of a bad lot—which he was. I know what other marriages are like, too. There isn’t any freedom for the woman, only for the man. Why, Ford told me that it’s only the father that has any legal rights over his children at all.”

“It’s true,” said Lucian. “To the shame of those who tolerate it, the law of the land only acknowledges one parent for children born in wedlock, and that is the father. But can’t you trust me, Rose? I can promise you that it wouldn’t be a case of Jim Aviolet over again,” said the doctor rather grimly.

She shook her head again. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. I even think you’d do better than any one for Ces. But I don’t hold with second marriages.”

The doctor ignored that pronouncement, which Rose had frequently heard employed by her mother.

“I am very much interested in Cecil, altogether apart from his relationship to you, and personally I believe that I could help him. But, in any case, I want to do that. I’ve wanted to ever since I first knew the boy.”

“I know that.”

“It isn’t Cecil that’s the obstacle, then?”

“No.”

“But you don’t like me enough? I’m not asking for anything more to begin with.”

“I like you much better than most other people,” said Rose candidly. “But I don’t want to marry. I didn’t like it before, and I made a great hash of it.”

“I’d risk that.”

“But I wouldn’t,” said Rose.

They looked at one another rather helplessly.

“If I loved you,” she said at last, “it would be different. I do trust you, and I think you’d be good to my Ces. But it wouldn’t be worth doing, unless I really did care.”

“Mayn’t I try to make you care?”

“I don’t think so,” said Rose slowly.

“Is there somebody else? No, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”

But his face had altered.

“It’s like this. I don’t hold with second marriages, like I said before, and I had a rotten time the first time, and if any one had told me, when Jim died, that I’d ever run the risk of putting my head through the same noose a second time, I’d have called them a liar. Neither more nor less. But there’s a—person that I’m sort of attracted by, in a way, though I don’t know that there’s much sense in it, because he’s never said a syllable of that sort to me, and so,” said Rose, very much flushed and implacably straightforward, “if I ever did do anything in that line, I suppose I should want it to be him. But, mind you, I haven’t got any reason to think it ever will be, and I should have to be a long sight surer of myself than I am now.”

“I see,” said the doctor slowly.

“I—I’m sorry,” said Rose.

“Don’t let it make any difference, my dear. I don’t give up hope, but I shan’t worry you. Honestly, I think you and I could find happiness together, but these things aren’t lightly come by. Will you go on just as before and let me see you very often, even if you do leave Squires? And, above all, let me be of use to you whenever I can?”

“You’ve been the best friend I’ve had, ever since I came to England.” Rose stood up and gave him both her hands in an impetuous gesture. “I like you much too much ever to let it be anything but the real thing—Maurice.”

She had never called him so before.

“Thank you,” said Dr. Lucian.

She stood for a moment, hesitating, and then said with a sort of rush: “And for goodness’ sake, don’t think too much about what I said. It seemed fairer to tell you, but I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, for a moment, and it would take a lot to make me marry again, especially out of my own class. Once bit twice shy,” concluded Mrs. Aviolet.

Neither she nor Maurice Lucian referred again to their conversation during the remaining days of Rose’s visit.

If there were a certain consciousness latent between them, Rose forgot it speedily enough, in her preoccupation with the question of Cecil.

“I think I shall go down to Hurst,” she said.

The Lucians, unlike the Aviolets, never proffered advice.

Consequently, Rose felt desirous of it.

“Don’t you think I’d better?”

“For your own sake, or for Cecil’s?”

“Both, I suppose. I can’t bear to think of him unhappy.”

“He wrote you quite a happy letter; and I don’t really think you could help him by going there and bringing the whole thing up again,” said Lucian.

“It’s so very hard to do nothing.”

“The hardest thing there is,” agreed the doctor gravely.

She looked at him anxiously.

“Poor little Cecil,” said Henrietta. “Don’t you think he’s probably learnt his lesson, Rose, if the other boys have found him out in some trick or other, and have been horrid to him? If you go down there, it’ll make it all assume enormous proportions to him, and, after all, even Mr. and Mrs. Lambert aren’t supposed to know about it officially, as she said in her letter.”

“Then I’d better not go?” Rose repeated slowly, as though she could hardly believe in the necessity for the discipline, so alien to her, of inaction.

“I should think, better not.”

Rose, from indignation at the suggestion, passed to unwilling consideration of it, and still more unwilling conversion to it.

But she made up her mind, at last, that Cecil should be allowed to weather the storm alone.

It was perhaps the first time that she had deliberately denied herself the luxury of acting upon impulse.

The next day she went to London.

“We shall see you in the holidays,” Henrietta Lucian said to her affectionately, “and Maurice says he’s going to be in London a good deal now—research-work, he calls it—and he wants to go and see you.”

“Oh, yes. He can come to Ovington Street whenever he likes. I’m going to stay with my uncle there—for a bit—he’s a pawnbroker.”

Rose had come to add that piece of information, which was by no means new to Miss Lucian, almost automatically, in her determination not to risk gratifying Ford Aviolet by suppressing it.

She was very much pleased when she found herself in London again.

“I declare, I like the good old smell of the gas upstairs,” she emphatically announced to Felix Menebees, who carried her box up to her bedroom.

The gaunt youth, panting, and paler than ever from the ascent, smiled at her rapturously.

“Yes, Mrs. Aviolet, I’m sure we’re all delighted that you’ve come back again, if I may be allowed to say so.”

It was very evident, indeed, that Felix spoke truth at least as regarded himself, and Rose, with characteristic catholicity of outlook, welcomed his obvious admiration with exactly the same indiscriminate gratification that she had accorded to Charlesbury’s. But for all her transparent vanity, the daughter of the late Mrs. Smith did not lack shrewdness. She was perfectly aware that she might very well find herself falling in love with Lord Charlesbury, and she knew equally well that, although he had admired her at Squires, it was scarcely probable that he would ask her to marry him.

“And I don’t know that I’d accept him if he did,” Rose told herself stoutly. “It would be biting off a good deal more than I could chew, it seems to me. A place bigger than Squires, and a title, and another boy as well as Cecil, and perhaps babies of my own as well! There’d be more sense in taking Maurice Lucian than that!”

She thought very little of the advantages to be derived from marriage with a man in Charlesbury’s position. Her experience of “a gentleman” in the person of Jim Aviolet had been calculated to destroy conventional illusions on that score, and the once magic words, “my lady,” had lost romantic value in her ears, since hearing them habitually applied to her mother-in-law.

She resumed her old life over the pawnshop very easily.

In the phraseology of Mr. Smith, an arrangement had been come to between himself and his niece with no display of false delicacy upon either side.

“They do give me an allowance,” Rose admitted, “but I can’t say I enjoy taking it, though well I know they can spare it. However, that’s neither here nor there. I don’t want you to be out of pocket, Uncle A., I’m sure, by having me here.”

“That’s common honesty, Rose,” her relative answered simply.

“At the same time, I suppose you don’t want to make out of me?” Rose suggested, not altogether without a hint of doubtfulness.

“I wish to do what is fair and proper by all parties, myself included,” said Uncle Alfred with dignity. “The room that you occupy could very well let at seven-and-sixpence a week, exclusive of light and heating.”

“There is no heating, Uncle A., as you very well know. I’m not likely to ask for a fire, and the girl wouldn’t carry the coals up all those stairs if I did, most likely. As for the light, I can buy my own candles, and I’ll pay one-fourth of the gas-bill. That’s fair enough, I should hope.”

“Very well,” her uncle agreed without enthusiasm.

“And if you’ll let me manage the housekeeping, I’ll undertake to bring the weekly books down and feed myself into the bargain. It doesn’t cost more to feed five than to feed four.”

“Yes, it does,” said Uncle Alfred.

It was such a long while since Rose had heard any one, herself excepted, utter a flat contradiction, that she felt quite surprised, and she admitted to herself in that moment that such a form of intercourse was, after all, lacking in charm.

“Call it ten shillings a week, Uncle Alfred, and let’s be done with it.”

“Half a guinea, Rose.”

“Oh, well, half a guinea then.”

“And I shall be very glad of your company, my dear niece,” said the old man, suddenly affable. “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver, and I trust that you will never find me anything else. Of course, you’ll be ready to lend Felix a hand with the silver cleaning in the mornings?”

“Yes—well—all right. But one of these days, quite soon, Dr. Lucian, that I told you about, is going to try and find me some work during the term-time, that I can do.”

“Charity begins at home,” said Uncle Alfred.

Rose laughed, her ready, easy laughter. She was quite willing to help Felix in cleaning the silver from the shop, and although she sincerely intended to undertake any work which Lucian might suggest to her, there was at the back of her mind an unformulated idea that circumstances might arise which would render such a course unnecessary.

When she had paid a visit to Hurst, at Mrs. Lambert’s cordial suggestion, and found Cecil stronger-looking and more animated than she had ever seen him, Rose realized herself to be happier than she had been for many years.

The deepest anxiety in her heart was momentarily quelled, when Mrs. Lambert had told her that there had been no further signs of a lack of truthfulness in Cecil.

He seemed to be happy, and although he told Rose that he did not like games, she could see no mental reservations behind the ingenuous, uplifted gaze of his brown eyes.

Maurice Lucian was frequently in London, and always came to see her. She received him in the sitting-room above the shop, introduced him to the old pawnbroker and to Felix Menebees, and was pleased when Uncle Alfred chose to annex him as a player of backgammon.

“A sensible, likeable fellow, and I have no doubt that he will be brought to a knowledge of the Word in due season,” pronounced Uncle Alfred, who never took for granted the status of any fellow-creature as a Christian.

Cecil and Rose spent his short Christmas holidays at Squires, and she received the placid congratulations of his grandparents on the great improvement which they alleged to have taken place in the little boy.

Ford and Diana were at their own house, and Rose did not see them at all.

She took Cecil back to Hurst herself, and returned to Ovington Street.

There, two days later, she received a letter from Lord Charlesbury, to tell her that he was just returned from Paris and to ask whether he might call upon her.

His letter was dated from a London club.

XIII

“Uncle A., there’s a friend of mine wants to come and see me. Can I ask him to look in, one evening?”

“Say about nine o’clock—after supper.” Uncle Alfred did not stress the point, but Rose perfectly understood his reservation. “Yes, if you want to. Who is the young man?”

“It’s not a young man. It’s Lord Charlesbury. He’s a friend of the Aviolets.”

“You needn’t tell me that. You didn’t pick up a lord off your own bat, my girl, and it wouldn’t speak any the better for you if you had. What are his intentions?”

“Uncle! You don’t understand. It isn’t that sort of thing at all. I never heard any one so old-fashioned as you are. He just wants to call on me.”

“Rose, you know what the Apostle Paul says as to the conduct of widows. At the same time, I should be the first person to rejoice if you were to find a good husband, and a man who would be a father—and a better father—to your boy. And the aristocracy of this country are such——”

“Don’t fly off like that, Uncle,” Rose besought him. She was not embarrassed, only mildly anxious to restrain the pawnbroker’s imaginative flights.

“I’m not thinking of marrying anybody—if you remember, poor Jim wasn’t the sort of husband that would make me want another of the same kind in a hurry—and I don’t believe Lord Charlesbury is, either.”

“Has he been married?”

“Yes. He’s a widower.”

“So much the more suitable,” said the indomitable Mr. Smith decisively.

Rose shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m going downstairs, Uncle, to give Felix Menebees a hand with the silver. He does work, that boy.”

“No boy who didn’t work would remain in my service,” said Uncle Alfred simply, and, as Rose knew, quite truly.

They went downstairs, the old man to confer with Artie Millar in the private pledge-office at the back of the shop, and Rose to put on an apron, an old pair of gloves, and join Felix at his apparently endless task of cleaning the stock of silver, plate, and brass.

She reflected joyously, as she took her place on a cane-bottomed chair and smiled at the pallid Felix, astride a wooden stool:

“This is better than hanging about the hall at Squires, hearing Pug snorting, and waiting for the next meal.”

“Chuck me over some of that stuff, Felix, will you? My, what a lot you’ve done! I was late down, this morning.”

“I could always manage, Mrs. Aviolet,” the boy said shyly. “It’s very good of you to do this, but there isn’t any need. The windows take a lot of time, of course, but if I allow two hours for them and the supports, it’s as much as I want. And then there’s practically all the rest of the day for cleaning the stuff.”

“You do lots of other things as well, Felix—fetching the milk, for one.”

“Oh, I enjoy that. It makes a break. Mrs. Aviolet, have you ever wanted adventures?”

“Heaps of times,” said Rose heartily.

“So have I,” said Felix wistfully. “I often think what it’d be like, if I went out as a cowboy, or something, to the Wild West, or even if I went in for seeing life a bit in London, the way Mr. Millar does.”

He looked at Rose with a strange gleam in his pallid eyes.

“Have you ever read ‘Frank Belloment, the Gentleman Crook’? I don’t suppose you have. I know ladies don’t care for that kind of reading, but it’s great, really it is.”

“I’m fond of a good murder, myself,” Rose admitted. She had shared with her mother, from a very early age, an impassioned interest in the more sensational items of police-court news as reported in the illustrated press.

“Belloment doesn’t go in for murders, only big jewel hauls, or financial coups. As a matter of fact, the book makes out that this Belloment, that I’m telling you about, he never took things from poor people, but only from the rich, that have more than they want. That’s why they call him the Gentleman Crook. And he goes into Society, too, and that’s where he finds out about people’s jewellery.”

“Where is this book?” Rose demanded.

Felix produced from his pocket a paper volume. “There’s one comes out every week. And sometimes they have a story about fellows going out gold-digging, or convicts escaping from prison, and once there was a boy ran away from a shop and went to sea, and I couldn’t help thinking it might very well all be true. Didn’t Mr. Millar go to sea once?”

“Yes, but I bet he doesn’t like talking about it,” said Rose shrewdly. “He’s done well for himself, since those days.”

“I suppose so,” said Felix, but the lust for romance still lingered in his pale face and whole attenuated person.

“Do you want to go abroad, Felix?”

“It’s the dream of my life,” Felix said earnestly.

“Where were you, before you came into the shop?”

“In an orphanage. I was brought up there. At one time, I had hopes of making some interesting discovery regarding my birth, which was irregular, if you’ll excuse me mentioning such a thing. But it appeared that it was only too well known whose son I was, and there was never any question of its being a foreign nobleman who was responsible, or any one like that.”

Rose was breathless with entirely unfeigned interest.

“Then who was it?”

“A travelling salesman, who lodged at the house where my mother was a servant-girl. He travelled in tombstones, I believe. It was suitable, in a way, because she died, when I was born, at the Union. She was only sixteen, and I believe he was turned out of the town and never dared show his face there again.”

“Served him right! Then was Menebees your mother’s name?”

“That’s right, Mrs. Aviolet. And they had me christened Felix because they’d come to the letter F, and Frank and Frederick, and the common names like that, had already been given. I think I was in luck there,” said the youth complacently.

“And how did you get out of the Union?”

“The people of the house where Mother’d been were very kind, and the story got round in the town, and her having been so young and all, and a good girl till this fellow came along, made people sorry, and a subscription was got up. So I was sent to St. Olave’s Orphanage, and brought up well. That’s where the old governor found me, him being a director, and he wanted a boy to work in the shop, and applied there, and I got sent. I always say I’m lucky,” repeated Felix.

“I think it was Uncle Alfred who was lucky, if you ask me.”

Felix blushed with gratification. “I’m sure it’s very kind of you to say so. And when I talk about going out to look for adventures, and travelling, and the like, it’s only in the way of a day-dream, like, Mrs. Aviolet, because I needn’t say I wouldn’t think of leaving the governor, without he wanted me to go. But it’s a kind of diversion, to pretend to myself that I’m off on the Long Trail, with nothing but my gun and my right arm between me and death.”

“I know, Felix, fast enough. I’ve played that sort of game myself,” Rose acknowledged.

“But everything you wanted, like that, would come true, I should think!” Felix cried, looking at her with all his naïve admiration in his face. “And you’ve seen the world and been to the East. I suppose you often ‘hear the East a-calling’?”

“Not I,” said Mrs. Aviolet with emphasis. “Or if I did, I shouldn’t listen. I’m glad I went, in a way, because it opens one’s eyes a bit, but I don’t ever want to go back. Give me old London, and the smell of the gas, every time.”

If Felix were slightly disillusioned by this candid admission, his loyalty did not betray the fact.

He and Rose exchanged their views indefatigably over the silver cleaning, and Rose frequently reflected that, for all the outrageous extravagances of fancy so innocently laid bare by Felix, he was a very much more interesting companion than her amiable, unimaginative, standard-bound sister-in-law, Diana.

“The fact is,” she told herself, with her usual unsparing determination that spades should be spades, “the fact is, this is the kind of place where I fit in. Not beautiful houses in the country, with everybody half asleep, and only waking up to drivel about the bulbs, or the horses, or who so-and-so was before she married somebody else’s first cousin’s sister’s uncle. The shop’s the place for me, right enough, only I must say, I’d like to see a few more people.”

The company of Uncle Alfred’s frequenters was not, indeed, exhilarating.

Artie Millar, whom Rose had once found attractive, now failed to satisfy her taste, unconsciously trained to other standards. He had grown fat, and was inclined to arrive in the mornings with a slightly yellow appearance, and a muttered complaint aside to Felix Menebees as to the “head” brought on by the avocations of the previous night.

It did not add to Rose’s admiration that she intuitively knew Artie Millar to be a thoroughly steady-going young man, of sober and respectable tendencies, whose wildest excesses never led to his arriving later than nine o’clock in the morning at the Ovington Street shop.

The pastiness of his complexion, from which the youthful tan that had captivated her fancy had long ago faded, she matter-of-factly attributed to his dislike of exercise and to the lack of fresh air in the shop.

Representatives of Foreign Missions occasionally called upon Uncle Alfred, and after short and earnest conversations with him in the upstairs sitting-room, usually departed, with subdued elation discernible in the tones of their farewells. They generally left on the table, or sometimes on the counter of the front shop, sodden-looking leaflets that bore, beneath a title that Rose described to herself generically as “The-Good-Work-in-Far-Timbuctoo,” an illustration of a black-coated missionary affectionately embracing the shoulders of a sable African, who was always suitably decked in a little vest and a pair of shorts. These pamphlets, and The Pawnbrokers’ Gazette, formed Uncle Alfred’s evening literature. From time to time, he received a visit from some contemporary of his own, but no one was ever asked to supper, although Mr. Smith permitted Rose to institute the appearance of a tea-tray, with cups and saucers, and a brew of very black, strong tea, at half-past nine every evening. When there was a caller, Rose added a plate of biscuits of the variety called “Fancy” by Uncle Alfred and “Squashed-fly” by his niece.

Further than this, Mr. Smith’s ideas of hospitality did not go.

Rose was not without doubts of her own wisdom in suggesting a visit from Lord Charlesbury. It never occurred to her to feel ashamed of the shop, but she did experience much vicarious wrath and disgust at the absence of hospitality that she considered her uncle displayed in his entertainment of a guest.

“I should have thought, Uncle A., I must say, that we could rise to a decent set-out of coffee, and I could quite well show the girl how to bring it in.”

“How to bring it in!” ejaculated Mr. Smith. “There’s only one way of carrying a tray, as far as I know, unless you want her to balance it on her head like a heathen. I can see plainly that the pomps and vanities of this wicked world are taking a hold on your mind, Rose. ‘Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and discontent withal.’”

His cat-like eyes gleamed upon her, and he shook his finger.

“There is something particularly displeasing to the Lord about display, Rose,” said Uncle Alfred, with his habitual assumption of being his Creator’s mouthpiece.

“I wonder what He thinks of the shop-window, then!” retorted Rose, with her tolerant, unmalicious tartness of repartee. “Well, Uncle A., if you won’t have coffee—and I suppose you won’t have whisky——”

(“I am ashamed of you,” said Uncle Alfred parenthetically.)

“—we shall have to do the best we can with tea, but I’m going to get some decent tea myself, and not that beastly black stuff that’s all twigs, and strangers-coming-from-overseas, and goodness knows what all.”

“If you choose to waste your money on tea, I cannot prevent it,” complacently said Mr. Smith.

“I suppose the Lord’ll look the other way, if it’s me and not you, that’s doing the display,” Rose observed, giggling.

It delighted her that Uncle Alfred should be obliged to pretend not to have heard her, in order to avoid the necessity of finding a reply.

“There’s one thing, it’s a lovely room,” said Rose to herself. “Of course the furniture isn’t like Squires, and never will be, but it’s good of its kind—that I will say. The upholstery is good, and I like crimson myself. That plant would do with a scrubbing, though.”

She pounced upon the aspidistra, and sent the little maid for soap and water and an old tooth-brush.

“I’d like it to look nice, Gladys, because a friend of mine is coming round this evening,” she explained.

They worked together cheerfully, and Gladys told Mrs. Aviolet all about the baker’s young man, who was becoming ever so attentive. Rose listened and ejaculated with an absorbed and impassioned interest, which Gladys, though pleased and flattered, obviously regarded as entirely natural. And Rose told herself that this was a good deal better than trying to pump interesting details about the engagement of Ford and Diana out of her mother-in-law.

“Shall you wear your white silk blouse with the ruffle, ’m, this evening?” Gladys inquired shyly.

“Do you think it’s pretty? Prettier than my blue?”

“It’s more stylish, ’m, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps it is,” said Rose thoughtfully.

She went upstairs that evening, tried on both the blouses, gazed at herself critically for a long while, rubbed some additional rouge into her face, and smeared her mouth with lip-salve, and finally went down to supper wearing the white blouse with the ruffle and her best navy-blue skirt.

Uncle Alfred gazed at her sharply, but Millar and Felix Menebees were both in the room and he said nothing.

As soon as supper was over Artie Millar went away and Felix retired to the performance of some one of the innumerable menial tasks that he always accepted as being part of his duty.

When the bell rang, Rose went half-way downstairs.

It was Felix who opened the door, Gladys having stipulated that she should not be required to announce Lord Charlesbury by name, as “titles upset her,” and Rose having indignantly retorted that a Lordship couldn’t be introduced with the customary formula of “a gentleman to see you.”

She had finally compromised with an undertaking from Felix Menebees to open the door himself, and usher Lord Charlesbury as far as the staircase, where Rose was to come and meet him.

She heard his deep, pleasant voice speaking to Felix, and a tremulous monosyllable from Felix in return, and then she ran down to meet him.

“I’m very glad to see you again,” said Lord Charlesbury, although Rose was only too well aware that he could hardly see her at all, in the absence of all but absolutely necessary illumination insisted upon by Uncle Alfred. “How are you?”

“I’m quite well, thank you,” Rose replied, in the literal formula taught her long ago by her mother. “Won’t you come up?”

Uncle Alfred was not in the sitting-room, to the relief of his niece, and she and her visitor sat down each in a plush-covered armchair upon either side of the small gas-fire. A beaded footstool, with curly legs, and a fire-screen, its dingy white-wood panel bearing a sprawled painting of yellow and pink roses, stood between them.

Rose looked at Charlesbury.

She had not seen him very often, but she had thought about him a great deal, and felt that strange fear, which is common to all those who have outgrown very early youth, lest the reality of a remembered presence should prove disappointing. He smiled at her, his grave, attractive smile.

“How’s your boy, and how are they all at Squires?”

“Ces is very well, and he likes Hurst all right. I saw your Hugh, when I was down there last.”

“Did you? I’m hoping to go and see him myself, to-morrow. They tell me he’s a born cricketer. Is Cecil keen on that?”

“No,” said Rose baldly, unable to think of any form of phraseology that should soften the unpleasant admission. She felt instinctively that Charlesbury would think Cecil’s lack a regrettable one.

“I daresay it’ll come later, or more probably football absorbs all his energies, unless he hasn’t any to spare for lessons. Hugh is far too one-idea’d. I hope the lads have made friends?”

It struck Rose, as she heard the question, that Cecil had no particular friends amongst his school-fellows, and the thought roused again the never deeply dormant anxiety that lay always in her mind.

She made no answer, because she could not think of anything to say, but before the silence had become embarrassing to her, Lord Charlesbury said:

“What about yourself, Mrs. Aviolet? I’m delighted to hear from Ford that there’s every chance of meeting you at Squires in the holidays.”

“Oh, yes, they always want Ces, and I shall be there part of the time, anyway. But I’m really by way of looking out for some sort of a job myself up here.”

“A job?”

“I haven’t got any money, except what Jim’s people allow me, and I’ve had to come to an arrangement with my uncle here, but I’d like to do something besides cleaning the silver in the shop,” said Rose.

“You are, actually, living here?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I see,” said Charlesbury reflectively.

He put up his single eyeglass and gazed round the room.

“Of course, it isn’t exactly like Squires, but I’ve never been keen on the country, myself, and I like this much better.”

“You’re not lonely?”

“Dear me, no,” said Rose, surprised. “My Uncle Alfred is very good company in his own way, provided you don’t pay too much attention to him when he gets on the religious tack, and that boy that opened the door to you in the shop, Felix Menebees, he’s as nice as can be, and a great friend of mine. The other assistant is all right—Millar—but not exciting. And I see Dr. Lucian, too, pretty often. You remember him, at Squires?”

“The doctor at Squires? Oh, yes, I remember him quite well.”

There was nothing at all derogatory in Charlesbury’s tone, but neither was there any enthusiasm.

Why, indeed, should there be, Rose inquired of herself, in resentment at a slight feeling of disappointment.

“But do forgive me,” Charlesbury smiled at her frankly, “if I ask whether you don’t sometimes long to find yourself in a—a more congenial setting? For instance, we know that at Squires Lady Aviolet is really rather lonely since Ford’s marriage, and would simply love to have you.”

“Oh, no, she wouldn’t,” said Rose.

“Are you quite sure of that?”

“Quite. But, anyway, I don’t want to go back there, except when I can’t help it, for the sake of being with Ces. I was bored stiff at Squires. Surely you remember that,” said Rose naïvely.

“Yes?—well, I’m sorry. After all, that was some little while ago, and perhaps I’d hoped that time—and distance—might have softened your prejudice.”

Rose was beginning a vigorous protest at this description of her own attitude towards Squires when Mr. Smith came into the room.

“Uncle A., this is Lord Charlesbury—my uncle, Mr. Smith,” said Rose, stammering a little.

Uncle Alfred bowed, Lord Charlesbury stood up and held out his hand, and they exchanged greetings.

“How d’you do,” said Lord Charlesbury.

“Good evening, my lord. I am very well, I thank you,” said Uncle Alfred. “Sit down again, if you please. Am I intruding?”

“In your own house, Uncle A.? Whatever next, I wonder?” muttered his niece. She pushed forward the old man’s chair and they all three sat down. The three-cornered conversation that ensued was remarkable neither for smoothness nor for spontaneity.

Charlesbury alone spoke with an effect of being at his ease, and Rose uneasily suspected that this was rather the result of the habit of good breeding, than from any natural affinity with his present audience. Uncle Alfred said “my lord” a great many times, but kept a wary and distrustful eye upon his guest, and from time to time transferred his glance to Rose, as though reviewing the two in conjunction.

They talked about politics, and Rose was silent, from ignorance of the subject and from a complete lack of interest in it. They tried to talk about Squires, and Uncle Alfred became Scriptural, and alluded to the pomps and vanities of this world, whereat Lord Charlesbury became strangely unresponsive.

It was a relief to Mrs. Aviolet when a prolonged clatter of china and a timid knock outside the door heralded the entrance of the little maid Gladys.

“Tea,” said Rose, and was shocked at the blatancy of her own extreme relief at the interruption.

She poured out the tea, glad of an occupation, and with her eyes dared Uncle Alfred to comment upon the unusual elegance of the white fringed tea-cloth thrown over the tray, the best cups and saucers, and a display of Osborne biscuits in place of the “Squashed-flies.”

“Tea is less harmful to the nerves than coffee,” said Uncle Alfred sententiously, “but women are far too much addicted to both.”

“You’re fond of a cup of tea yourself, Uncle. We always have it after supper,” said Rose to Lord Charlesbury.

“It used to be usual everywhere. I can’t remember those days myself, but I can quite well remember my grandfather telling about the times when dinner was at five or six o’clock, and tea was brought into the drawing-room afterwards.”

“Can you?” said Rose, inwardly furious at her own inanity.

“Rose, my dear, call Felix Menebees. A cup of tea will do him good,” said Uncle Alfred blandly.

His niece turned startled eyes upon him. The suggestion was not quite unprecedented, but it was very nearly so, and she had certainly never contemplated its being made on the evening of Lord Charlesbury’s visit.

A sense of reluctance was followed by angry remorse. Why on earth shouldn’t she want Felix?

Rose got up, flung open the door and called down the stairs for Felix in tones that lacked none of her habitual vigour.

Then she went back and poured out a fresh cup of tea, adding carefully the three lumps of sugar that Felix liked, with her usual precautions against allowing Uncle Alfred to perceive the extravagance.

The conversation was actually a little easier when Felix, self-conscious but not embarrassed, had joined them, seating himself upon the extreme edge of a chair, and balancing his cup and saucer between his knees.

Lord Charlesbury talked about America, and Felix at least asked questions, whereas Uncle Alfred confined himself to ejaculating comments, mostly of a disparaging nature.

“Uncle A.’s taken against him, that’s clear enough,” reflected Rose. She held a high opinion of Uncle A.’s shrewdness, and the thought depressed her.

She looked at Charlesbury, wondering whether he reciprocated the pawnbroker’s lack of sympathy, and was forced to the conclusion that he did. His manner was admirable, and his courtesy quite unforced, but there was a certain bewilderment apparent beneath his kindly suavity, and Rose felt sure that he would be profoundly relieved when the evening came to an end.

“Well, we all bite off more than we can chew sometimes, I suppose,” she thought to herself with gloomy philosophy, but it was not until she was actually preceding Charlesbury down the stairs to the front door that it occurred to her to apply to him, as well as to herself, her favourite descriptive idiom.

Had Charlesbury, likewise, bitten off more than he could chew? It was a great deal more likely that he was now, perhaps for the first time, cautiously eyeing the size of the projected bite before attempting it.

“Won’t you let me come and take you out to dinner one night?” he asked as they parted.

“I don’t know,” said Rose in a worried way. She was quite incapable of coquetry, and her reply was prompted by sheerest indecision.

“Why not?” asked Charlesbury, smiling.

“Oh, lots of reasons. I haven’t got a frock, for one thing. Good-night,” said Rose abruptly.

He did not pursue the question of his invitation, but said good-night to her gently and cordially.

Rose went upstairs again, strangely inclined to burst into tears, and very angry with herself for the inclination.

She bounced into the sitting-room, with a movement habitual to the late Mrs. Smith.

Uncle Alfred was reading The Pawnbrokers’ Gazette and Felix was tidily replacing the cups upon the tea-tray.

Rose helped him in silence, glancing out of the corners of her eyes at the imperturbable Mr. Smith, and affecting unconcern by humming a little tune.

When Felix had departed downstairs with the tray, Rose observed in a detached tone of voice, with her head rather upon one side:

“Well, not one of our successes, on the whole, was it? Of course, Uncle A., I shouldn’t think of saying a word to you, but at the same time——”

“That will do, Rose. Say nothing in a hurry. Remember what James has written on the subject of bridling that unruly member, the tongue, and hold your peace. I have only one piece of advice for you, my girl: Ask yourself whether you want to spend the rest of your life in your natural element, or out of it?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rose declared, knowing only too well.

“I shan’t bear you a grudge, if you take the chance of bettering yourself, and it might be a very good thing for your boy. But it’ll be the parting of the ways for you and me, and for you and any other friends you may have in your own walk of life; so if you go into it, you must go into it with your eyes open, that’s all. That titled friend of yours is all very well—I haven’t a word to say against him—but you mark my words, Rose, he’s not a mixer, and he never will be. Now if it was that doctor friend of yours, it would be another thing altogether——”

“Oh,” Rose became suddenly reflective.

“Is Dr. Lucian what you’d call a good mixer, Uncle?”

“Certainly. Both by nature and in consequence of his profession. And though I’m not saying you’d not be doing very well for yourself in marrying him, it wouldn’t be the same thing as taking upon yourself the responsibilities of joining up with titled folk, Rose.”

“Jim was Lord Charlesbury’s class, you know.”

“I do know, indeed. And a deplorable business you and he made of your marriage, from all accounts. His death was a merciful release for you.”

“Well, he was a bad lot,” Rose pointed out, without acrimony.

“And this Lord Charlesbury is not. But you have many times complained to me of your inability to feel at home with the Aviolets and their friends, and your disinclination for their mode of life. Ask yourself, therefore, whether you would find it any easier to do yourself credit as the wife of Lord Charlesbury, or any other lord?”

Rose did indeed ask herself this question in the days that ensued.

She saw Lord Charlesbury again, a few days later, when he asked her to lunch with him at a very quiet little restaurant, of which Rose had never heard before, in a quarter of London which she had always supposed to be an unfashionable one. On that occasion he made no reference whatever to his visit to Ovington Street, but again suggested indirectly that Mrs. Aviolet should seek more congenial surroundings for herself.

“But you don’t understand,” said Rose at last. “It’s at Squires, and places like that, that I’m such a fish out of water. The shop, and all that, is my home.”

She looked at him as she spoke, and a horrible sense of finality came over her, although not a muscle of his face had altered.

“I’ve got a headache,” said Rose abruptly. “I’m going home.”

He took her back to Ovington Street.

Rose had neither the training nor the temperament conducive to self-command. In the taxi, to her own unutterable dismay, she began to cry.

“It is my headache,” she lied desperately, the tears streaming down her face. “I often get like this—the pain is dreadful!”

“I’m so sorry,” said Charlesbury. His face and his voice alike showed a deep concern.

At the door he looked at her rather wistfully, holding her hand in farewell. “Are you quite, quite certain that you don’t need a change—that you’re all right here?”

Rose nodded.

Her gaze took in the mean little street and the door leading into the dark shop, and the angle of the wall which discreetly hid the three golden balls that protruded behind.

Rose Aviolet mopped at her wet eyes with a screwed-up handkerchief and then spoke, clearly enough in spite of the choke in her voice.

“I’m quite, quite certain that this is the right place for me, except just when I’ve got to be at Squires for the sake of Ces. Uncle Alfred is my relation, and him and me understand one another all right. It was me and the Aviolets that didn’t. And it would always be the same, with anybody of their sort, and anybody of mine.”

Felix Menebees opened the door.

“Good-bye,” said Rose, and went into the shop.

Rose Aviolet shed no more tears over her abortive romance. “No use crying over spilt milk” had been a favourite aphorism of Mrs. Smith’s, and it was one which had always recommended itself to Rose.

She did not allow Uncle Alfred any opportunity of remarking that his advice had been taken, but wrote to Dr. Lucian with a request for work.

“And it seems fair to tell you that what I once hinted about myself won’t ever come off now. And I’m not going to marry anybody ever. I’ve got enough to do thinking about Ces, and if there’s any spare time, I can put it in over the job you’re going to get me.”

He found her a job, in connection with a large children’s hospital, and after a few weeks, Rose was invited to occupy a room there.

“I’ll do it,” she decided; “it’s better than Squires, and I’ve got to make some sort of a life for myself. And it’s not long till the holidays anyway.”

At the thought of Cecil her heart lightened again.

“Hurst does seem to be doing him good,” she thought. “It was worth meeting Lord Charlesbury, after all, if only because he told me about Hurst for Cecil.”