Part 2

"Surely it was an odd thing to do? A house for boys in a public school seems an incongruous sort of place to select."

"It's just because it is a house for boys he has selected it. His theory is that nowhere is a girl so safe as surrounded by boys and men. I can see his reasoning myself, but you can't make the world see it. However, we'd better get those times fixed up and fit in the various teams. All that beastly physical drill to arrange, too--but you understand, don't you, Nicholl?"

"I quite understand," young Nick replied with so profound a gravity that Tony instantly suspected him of a desire to laugh.

They lit their pipes, and for an hour or more wrestled with the problem in hand. Then young Nick departed.

The instant Tony was left alone he sat him down in a comfortable chair, switched on the electric light behind his head, and drew from his pocket a letter. First of all he looked at the date, which he had not done when he read it in the morning. It was dated eight days back, but the postmark was that of the day before.

"Dear old Tony," it ran, "one always thinks of you when one wants anything done in a hurry, and done most uncommonly well. That's what you get by being so confoundedly conscientious and good-natured. The combination is a rare one. I, for instance, am good-natured, but my worst enemy couldn't call me tiresomely conscientious. Whenever you see my handwriting, you will say, 'Wonder what young Fitz wants now? Of course he wants something,' and of course I do. I want you to look after Lallie for me till the end of March. You've got a magnificent big house--far too large for a bachelor like you. You've got a lady-housekeeper whose manifest propriety is so stupendous that even Paddy is awed by it--a lady, I am sure, estimable in every respect--and you have fifty boys ranging from thirteen to nineteen. Oh, yes! and I forgot the worthy Paunch and Val. Now if you can't, amongst you, look after my little girl for six months you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. She's too old to put to school; I don't want to leave her with hunting friends where she'd be engaged and perhaps married before I got back. Young men are for ever falling in love with Lallie of late, and it's a terrible nuisance. She cares not a penny for any of them, so long as I am there to prove by comparison how inferior they all are to her own father. But with me away, who knows but that their blandishments might prevail? And I have other plans for Lallie--but not yet. As you know, I've brought her up in a sensible reasonable human sort of fashion. She has been taught to look upon mankind--and by mankind I mean the male portion of humanity--as fellow creatures, just as much deserving of kindness and trust and straightforward dealing as girls or women; and because she looks upon them as fellow-creatures, with no ridiculous mystery or conventional barriers between her and them, she is far safer than most girls not to make a fool of herself or to be taken in by cheap external attractions. Of course she's a bit of a flirt--what self-respecting Irish girl is not?--and your big boys will all be sighing at her shrine, but it will neither do them nor her any harm.

"I don't often speak of Alice these days, but I never forget, and I know you'll be kind to my little girl for her sake. Let the child go to the dancing school, though there's little they can teach her; and she can keep up her singing, and perhaps she'd better ride, though riding with a master will be little to Lallie's taste. I enclose a cheque for the lessons, etc. She's a good girl, Tony; and in spite of her unusually sensible up-bringing, is as delicately feminine in all her instincts as any old Tabby in Hamchester.

"Lord Nenogh offered me third gun in his shoot in India this cold weather, and I couldn't resist it. I was getting a bit musty. I've been bear-leading those children for eighteen months--ever since dear old Madame died. Lallie and I always hit it off perfectly, but Paddy's too like me, and gets on my nerves and reminds me that I'm not so young as I was, and I felt I needed a complete change of scene and people, if I am to remain the agreeable fellow I always have been; and I couldn't take Lallie with me tiger shooting, now could I? We sail from Marseilles in the _Mooltan_ on the 29th; send me a line to the _poste restante_ there, just to tell me that my property has duly reached you--as it should about the 23rd. Till then I shall be flying about all over the place.

"Take care of my Lallie.

"Yours as ever, "Fitz."

The writing was small, close, upright, and distinct. When he had read the letter through Tony examined the envelope and found from its appearance that it had evidently spent a considerable time in somebody's pocket: either that of the writer or of some untrustworthy messenger.

He lit another pipe, and as he watched the fragrant clouds of smoke roll forth and spend themselves about the room, his mind was busy with memories of Fitzroy Clonmell; brilliant, inconsequent, lovable failure.

"He wouldn't have been a failure if his wife had lived," Tony always maintained to those who, remembering Fitz and his early promise of notable achievements, lamented his falling off; his wholesale violation of those youthful pledges.

Tony found himself going back to those first years at Oxford, when brilliant Fitz did all he could to push his young schoolfellow among the athletic set, where, reading man as Fitz undoubtedly had been then, his place was quite as assured as in the schools. Tony remembered his shock of surprise when in his first term he went to Clonmell's rooms in the High, to find them tenanted by a brown-haired, gentle-voiced girl who informed him she was "Mrs. Clonmell"--Alice Clonmell.

"Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, with hair hazel brown"--

Fitz used to sing at a time when the whole world read "Trilby," and make eyes at his wife the while. She was very kind to Tony, and he adored her with the humble dog-like devotion of a rather plain and awkward youth whom ladies usually ignored.

He remembered the wrath of the Balliol authorities, and Fitz's account of his stormy interview with the little Master, and how after much of what Fitz called "fruitless altercation," he wheedled the Master into coming to see Alice. Whereupon that dignitary observed that "there were, perhaps, extenuating circumstances, which must be taken into consideration."

By and by there came the twins, who were known as "the Balliol Babies."

Fitz, to the disappointment of all his friends, was called to the Irish, not the English, Bar. But he was Irish before all else, and declared that his brilliant abilities were far too precious and illuminating to be taken out of his own country.

He practised with some success in Dublin. People began to talk of him as a young lawyer who had arrived, when Alice met with the carriage accident which caused her death.

Fitz threw up all his prospects at the Bar, left Ireland, and, with the two children and their old nurse, wandered about Europe for a while, finally settling them in a tiny hill-side villa near the village of Veulettes, in Normandy, with an old French lady, in charge as governess. It happened at that time that his own little property near Cahirciveen in County Kerry, which had been let on a long lease during his minority, fell vacant, and Fitz went back there for the spring months, taking Madame, his French cook, and his children with him. He kept on the villa at Veulettes, and the family lived alternately in Kerry and in Normandy, as it happened to suit its erratic head. Fitz was a keen fisherman, and a good shot. The fishing at Cahirciveen was beyond reproach. When he wanted good hunting he took a little house for the season either in Kildare or some hunting county in England, and wherever he went Madame and Lallie, the Irish nurse and Celestine the French cook, went in his train, and they were joined in the vacations by Paddy, who had been sent to preparatory school at a very tender age.

Tony's pipe went out as he sat thinking of the innumerable vacations he had spent with the Clonmells; of their warm-hearted and tireless hospitality shown to him wherever that somewhat nomadic family happened to be. No one knew better than Tony Bevan that Fitzroy Clonmell would gladly share all he possessed with him, to the half of his kingdom; and looking back down the long valley of years that lay behind him, Tony could not see one that was not brightened by a thousand kindnesses from Fitz. From the time he came as an ugly little fourth-form boy to Hamchester, where Fitz was the idol of the lower school, the admiration of all the bloods, and the trial and terror of most of the masters, he had nothing to remember of him but good-nature, good feeling, and good friendship. Fitz was casual, erratic, eccentric; nothing was stable about him except his affections. The affections of his friends he often strained almost to the snapping point by his irritating incapacity for observing regular days or hours or ordinary conventions; but somehow the strained affections always contracted into place again, and people shrugged their shoulders and exclaimed, "Just like Fitz!" and forgave him in the long run, till he made them angry again, when a precisely similar process was repeated.

Tony saw as in a vision innumerable pictures of Lallie as an elf-like small girl who always responded with enthusiastic affection to the rather shy advances of the strong ugly young man who was so good at games, so popular with his fellow sportsmen, so extremely shy in any other society.

Every stranger noticed handsome Paddy, even as a baby; but for the most part they passed Lallie by in her childhood, and Tony's notice and affection were very precious to her. He and the quaint, pale-faced little girl had much in common: they understood one another. He hadn't seen Lallie for over a year, and during that time she had changed and developed. Her manner had acquired a certain poise and balance wholly lacking to the wild, shy nymph of Irish river and Norman hillside that he knew so well.

Old Madame's death had made her not only more than ever the companion of her father, but it had also made her mistress of his house, and Lallie had found in herself all sorts of latent powers and possibilities, hitherto wholly unsuspected, and these had crystallised into qualities. Tony realised that while she was temperamentally the same Lallie--subtle, sensitive, responsive to every smallest change in the mental atmosphere--a new Lallie had arisen, who would be by no means so easily dealt with, and a shrewd suspicion flashed across his mind that Fitzroy Clonmell was equally aware of the change, and that with his customary cleverness he had shifted the responsibility on to other shoulders than his own.

Tony sat so still that Val came from under the chair, stretched himself, and laid his head softly on his master's knees, regarding him with tenderly inquiring eyes. The clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve, and Tony arose.

"Time for bed, old chap," he said, "but we'll have a look at the night first."

He and the dog went out into the garden, and Tony looked up at the black bulk of the house against the moonlit sky. The great dormitories in the wing lay stark and silent, all their teeming life wrapped in the silence of healthy boyhood's slumber; and there too, in Miss Foster's room above his own study, lay Lallie--Lallie, with her bodyguard of fifty boys. He smiled at the quaint fancy. Val rubbed himself against his master's legs.

"Well, Val, we must do our best to take care of her," said Tony, "but I can't have her flirting with my boys and upsetting them. That would never do. However, it isn't as if she was one of those flaringly pretty girls that every fellow turns round to look at."

Somehow this reflection did not seem to afford much comfort to Tony. A vision of Lallie's face lifted to his as she said good-night came between him and the comfortable assurance that she, at all events, was not pretty. How soft her dark hair was!--and it smelt of violets. Poor little motherless, warm-hearted Lallie!

He saw Val comfortably settled in his basket, and went quietly up the dark staircase. He paused outside Lallie's door to listen; all was perfectly still. In another half-hour every soul in B. House was fast asleep.

*CHAPTER III*

Lallie woke with a start, a great bell was clanging--it seemed to her in the middle of the night--then she realised where she was, remembered that Paddy had told her the rising bell rang at seven, and turned over and went to sleep again, only to be awakened by another bell, equally loud, an hour later.

This time Lallie sat up in bed, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and looked about her. A long shaft of sunlight stretched across the room through the gap made by a green blind that did not exactly fit its window. The windows were open, and a gay little breeze moved the blinds gently to and fro. Miss Foster's room was large and stately and handsomely furnished; but somehow it lacked individuality: it was impossible to divine, even to make a guess at Miss Foster's characteristics from her bedroom.

"She must be a paragon of tidiness," thought Lallie; "but perhaps that's Ford. After all, the woman can't leave things about when she's away, so I won't hate her for that. I wonder what she'd say if some one showed her one of those gazing crystals and she beheld me lying here in her bed!" Lallie smiled as she pictured Miss Foster's astonishment, and perhaps some thought of the same kind occurred to Ford, who at that moment appeared bearing a breakfast tray, for she gave vent to a little sound, as she crossed the room, that might have been mistaken for a suppressed giggle had not her appearance been so severely servant-like and respectful.

"Mr. Bevan sent his kind regards, miss, and hopes as you're rested; and he says you're not to get up, but take it quietly this morning after such a long journey. Shall I pull up your blinds, miss, or would you prefer the shaded light?"

Ford shot out the words all in one breath, and deposited the tray on a little table beside the bed.

"Pull them all up, Ford. Oh, what a beautiful morning! Give Mr. Bevan my love and say I slept beautifully; and Miss Foster's bed, and Miss Foster's room, and the view from Miss Foster's windows, and everything that is hers is charming."

Ford waited in respectful silence till she had settled the tray on Lallie's knees.

"You'll give me a hand with backs and things, won't you, Ford? Nearly all my frocks fasten behind--'tis the stupid fashion of the present day, but it can't be helped. I'm afraid I shall make a good deal more work for you, Ford, but Daddie said I was to tell you he'll make it worth while at Christmas. You see, we didn't know whether T--whether Mr. Bevan would have room for Bridget; she's my old nurse, and she does everything for me at home, but she's a bit difficult with other servants. Do you think you'll be able to manage for me, Ford?"

"I shall be very pleased to do my best, miss," said Ford demurely. "You see, I'm private parlourmaid; I've nothing to do with the young gentlemen's part of the 'ouse, and Miss Foster requires very little waiting on----'

"Oh, dear!" sighed Lallie; "not like me, but I'll try and be tidy in my room. Madame made me be that though Bridget spoiled me. Now don't let me be keeping you; I'll ring when I want to get up and you'll come and show me the bath-room."

When Ford reached the kitchen region again, she remarked to the cook:

"I don't know what it is about that young lady--she's not much to look at--but there's something about her that makes you want to do every mortal thing she wants the minute she's as't you--I think it must be her voice, it's that funny and weedlin'."

Cripps, the captain of the College fives, was in quarantine for mumps. An inconsiderate little sister had developed this disease two days after his return to school, and his mother being honest and considerate had hastened to inform Tony of the fact by telegram. Hence, Cripps, in rude health and the very worst of tempers, was removed from the society of his fellows to the drear seclusion of the sick-room by night and of the garden by day, or such parts of the neighbourhood as were in bounds, while the boys were in College. The rest of the inhabitants of Hamchester might take their chance. But Cripps, that morning, felt no inclination for a walk; savage and solitary he armed himself with a deck-chair and the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," and sat him down under an elm at the edge of the tennis lawn nearest that side of B. House which contained Miss Foster's room. Thus it came about that Lallie, having with the assistance of Ford arrayed herself in a white cambric frock, dismissed that excellent handmaid, and leaning out of the window beheld Cripps.

A boy--a big boy, with broad shoulders and a brown face and hair that stood up on end in front; a boy lying in a deck-chair and reading a novel at eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning. Lallie was devoured by curiosity. What was that boy doing there? Was he some old Hamchestrian staying in the house? No; he looked too youthful for that. Why was he not in College with the others?

Cripps turned a page and yawned widely, showing his white even teeth.

The September sun was hot and he felt sleepy. "The probity of parents sets the children's teeth on edge," said Cripps to himself, with a vague idea that he was quoting Scripture. He laid Sherlock Holmes face downwards on his knee and closed his eyes. What a long morning it had been! Might the maledictions of all righteous men fall upon that most mischievous of trivial diseases called mumps! Why had no doctor discovered the mump microbe and taken steps to stamp out the whole noxious tribe? They were footling fellows these doctors on the whole; all this trouble arose from the idiotic habit little girls have of kissing one another. Probably his little sister had kissed some wretched pig-tailed brat who was--Cripps had almost forgotten his wrongs in slumber when he was startled by a full sweet voice which carolled----

"Captain, art tha' sleeping down below?"

Cripps sat up very straight and looked about him.

"Why are you not in College?" the voice asked again.

Cripps looked up in the direction of the voice and leapt to his feet. Sherlock Holmes fell neglected on the grass.

Lallie was leaning out of the window just above him.

"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed politely; "I didn't know you were there."

"Naturally, for you were asleep. Now how comes it that you were falling asleep in the middle of the morning? That's what I want to know. Are you stopping with T--with Mr. Bevan too?"

Cripps longed to pose as a visitor, but honesty, like many worse things, is sometimes hereditary, so he hung his head and mumbled dismally:

"No, I'm one of the chaps; but I'm in quarantine--for mumps of all beastly silly diseases. I know I shan't have it, too."

"Poor boy," said Lallie sympathetically, "I hope you won't. I've had it, and it's horrible. Paddy brought it back from here once and gave it to me. It seems to me that the boys in this house are always having something."

"We don't have half as many things as the other houses," Cripps retorted indignantly, "and I haven't got it, it's my beastly little sister----"

"Now that's not nice of you," said Lallie reprovingly, "to speak of the poor little girl like that; no mortal could want mumps. But I don't think I can keep bawling to you from here. I'll come down if you can ferret out another chair--not a mumpy one, mind--and I'll try and bring you to a more Christian frame of mind."

She vanished from the window and Cripps flew to the summer house to fetch one of Tony's most luxurious garden chairs, feeling that for once the fates had not dealt unkindly with him when they put him in quarantine.

Across the lawn towards him came Lallie, swinging a green silk bag.

"Do you like your feet up?" asked the gallant Cripps. "There's a piece that pulls out."

"Thank you--it would be a pity to waste these shoes, wouldn't it?"

And Lallie subsided into a long chair which supported her very pretty feet, shod in shiny shoes with buckles and Louis Quinze heels. From the green silk bag she drew forth a roll, which proved to be lace, and she began to sew diligently.

"What pretty work!" said Cripps, drawing up his chair to face hers.

"It's a strip of Limerick lace I'm making, and I've just got to a 'basket.' The light's good, so I thought I'd do it this morning."

"May I see it close?" asked Cripps, wishing she would look at him instead of at her lace, though black eyelashes resting on rounded cheeks are by no means a disagreeable prospect.

This morning Lallie was not so pale. Her cheeks were never really rosy, but they were fresh, with a delicate, fault colour like the inside of certain shells. She held out the roll of work towards Cripps, and he took hold of one end while she unpinned the other and spread out the lace.

"By Jove!" said Cripps, but it was not at the lace he was looking so much as at Lallie's hand. Such an absurd small hand compared to his; so white, with beautiful pink filbert-shaped nails.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" said Lallie, of her lace.

"Awfully," said Cripps. "Whatever size do you take?"

"How d'you mean? You don't make lace in sizes."

"I beg your pardon, I was thinking of your hands. Look at them--compared to mine!"

"Now don't you be reproaching me with being so little. It's no fault of mine nor no wish; I've done my best to grow, but it's no use. I'm the only little person in a tall family, and it's very out-of-date for a girl to be small nowadays. I'm a sort of survival of the obsolete, and if I live to be old, I'll be looked upon as a sort of rarity, and people will come miles to see me."

"I should think people do that now," said Cripps, still keeping tight hold of the lace.

Lallie let go her end of it and looked at him.

"Now that's very kind of you to say that--really kind and nice. I wonder if all your family are exceptionally good-looking, because, if so, perhaps you can sympathise with me. Are they?"

"Well, no, I don't think they are," Cripps said, getting very red. "I really have never thought about it; one doesn't, you know, with one's own people."

"You'd have to if you were like me," Lallie sighed. "Dad is tremendously good-looking; so's Paddy--don't you think so?"

"Ye-e-e-s," Cripps answered, without enthusiasm, "I suppose he is; but one doesn't notice that sort of thing much in fellows----"

"I think it's their noses that make them so distinguished," Lallie continued meditatively. "Dad's and Paddy's, I mean. Now, my nose begins well, it does really--but it changes its character half way; and it's got a confiding tip, and that isn't in the least distinguished. My only consolation is, it isn't often red."

"I think it's an extremely neat nose," Cripps said, with convincing sincerity.

"Neat, but not gaudy! Ah, well, it's the best I've got, anyway, and I can smell anything burning in the kitchen quicker than most people. But all the same, I think it must be very agreeable to be so good-looking that people want to please you just because of it, without you doing anything at all. That's the way with Dad and Paddy. Now ordinary folks like you and me--I hope you don't mind rowing in the same boat with me?--have to be nice to people if we want them to like us."

"Is Paddy Clonmell your brother?"

"My twin brother, but we're not a bit alike, even in disposition, though we're the best of friends and I adore him. What are you celebrated for, and I'll see if I can't tell you your name; I've heard about most of you."

Cripps blushed.