In another minute the young man was walking down the drive alone, and his daughter had vanished.

He gave her time to take off her boots, then he sent for her.

He sat down at his writing-table and awaited her, feeling intensely annoyed.

How dared that mud-bespattered young man speak to her?

How could Mary be so wanting in dignity as to reply?

What was Marjory about to allow it?

Those children had far too much latitude.

He was in that frame of mind which, during the middle ages, resulted in the immurement of such disturbing daughters in the topmost turrets of their fathers' castles.

Mary came in, shut the door softly, and waited just inside it to say nervously:

"You sent for me, father?"

"Come here," said Mr Ffolliot.

Mary crossed the big room and stood at the other side of the knee-hole table facing him.

"I sent for you," Mr Ffolliot began slowly, and paused. Angry as he was, he found a moment in which to feel satisfaction at her pure colouring . . . "to make enquiries" he continued, "as to your late companion. Who is that exceedingly muddy person with whom you were talking in the front drive a few minutes ago?"

Yes; her colouring was certainly admirable. A good healthy blush sweeping over the white forehead till it reached the pretty growth of hair round the temples and dying away as rapidly as it had arisen, was quite a forgivable weakness in a young girl.

"I believe," said Mary cautiously, "that he is Mr Gallup, the new Liberal candidate."

"Did he tell you so?"

"No, father. He told me his name, but it was Grantly who thought he was that one."

"And may I ask what reason Mr Gallup had for imparting his name to you—did no one introduce him?"

"No, father."

"Well, how did the man come to speak to you?" Mr Ffolliot demanded, irritably. "You must see that the matter requires explanation."

"He was lost," Mary said mournfully, "and so I showed him the way."

"Lost," Mr Ffolliot repeated scornfully; "lost in Redmarley!"

"No, father, in the wood."

"And what was he doing in our woods, pray?"

"He had tried to come by a short-cut and got muddled and he fell down, and I couldn't pass by without speaking, could I . . . he might have broken his leg or something."

"What were you doing in the woods alone? I have told you repeatedly that I will not have you scouring the country by yourself. You have plenty of brothers, let one of them accompany you."

"I wasn't exactly alone," Mary pleaded; "Parker was with me."

"Mary," Mr Ffolliot said solemnly, "has it ever occurred to you that you are very nearly eighteen years old?"

"Yes, father."

"Well, that being the case, don't you think that decorum in your conduct, more dignity and formality in your manner are a concession you owe to your family. You know as well as I do that a young girl in your position does not converse haphazard with any stranger that she happens to find prone in the woods. It's not done, Mary, and what is more, I will not have it. This impertinent young counter-jumper probably was only too ready to seize upon any excuse to address you. You should have given him the information he asked and walked on."

"But we were going the same way," Mary objected; "it seemed so snobby to walk on, besides . . ." again that glorious blush, "he didn't speak to me first, I spoke to him."

Mr Ffolliot sighed. "Remember," he said solemnly, "that should you see him again you do not know that young man. . . ."

Silence on the part of Mary. Deep thought on the brow of Mr Ffolliot.

"To-morrow," he said at last, "you may do up your hair."

"Oh, father, mayn't I do it up to-night before church. I should love to, do let me."

"No, my child, to-morrow is more suitable."

Mary did not ask why. None of the children except the Kitten ever questioned any of Mr Ffolliot's decisions . . . to him.

"Have you done with me, father?" Mary asked. "I think it must be tea-time."

"Yes, Mary, you may go, but remember, nothing of this sort must ever occur again; it has distressed and annoyed me."

"I'm sorry, father, I didn't think . . ."

"You never do," said Mr Ffolliot, "that is what I complain of."

Thus it came about that Mr Ffolliot was himself directly responsible for the friendly smile which greeted Eloquent as Mary passed him in the aisle of Redmarley church that evening.

She had not been allowed to put up her hair that evening. She was not a grown-up lady yet.

Therefore would she grin at whomsoever she pleased.



CHAPTER VII

THE KITTEN

The Kitten was born on a Whitsunday morning about eight o'clock. Mr Ffolliot went himself to announce the news to Ger, who was sitting in his high chair eating bread and milk at nursery breakfast. Ger was all alone with Thirza, the under-nurse, and he was thunderstruck to see his father at such an unusual hour, above all, in such an unusual place as his nursery.

"Ger," said Mr Ffolliot, quite genially for him, "you've got a new little sister."

Ger regarded his father solemnly with large, mournful eyes, then said aggrievedly, "Well, I can't help it."

Mr Ffolliot laughed. "You don't seem overjoyed," he remarked.

"Are you sorry, father?" Ger asked anxiously.

"Sorry," Mr Ffolliot repeated, "of course not; why should you think I'm sorry?"

"Well, you see," said Ger, "it makes another of us."

Mr Ffolliot ignored this remark. He moved towards the door. At the door he paused; "You may," he said graciously, "go and see your little sister in an hour or two; mother said so."

As the door was closed behind him, Thirza sat down again with a sort of gasp. "Whatever did you mean, my dear, talking to Squire like that?" she demanded shrilly.

"Like what?" asked Ger.

"Sayin' as it wasn't your fault, and seemin' so down about it all. Why, you ought to be glad there's a dear little new baby, and you such an affectionate child an' all."

"It makes another of us," Ger persisted, and Thirza gave him up as an enigma.

In due time he went to the dressing-room off the big spare bedroom, and there sat the kind, comfortable lady he knew as "mother's nurse" (Ger had not seen her as often as the others, but still she came from time to time "just to see how they were all getting on," and he liked her). There she sat on a small rocking-chair with a bundle on her knee.

"Come, my darling, and see your little sister," she cried cheerfully.

Ger advanced. She opened the head flannel and displayed a small, dark head, and a red, puckered countenance.

"When will she be able to see?" asked Ger.

As if in answer the baby opened a pair of large dark eyes and stared fixedly at the round, earnest face bent above her.

"See, bless you!" mother's nurse exclaimed, "see! why, she isn't a kitten. She can see right enough. Look how she's taking you in. She has stared about from the minute she was born, as if she'd been here before and was looking round to see that things were all the same. She's the living image of Squire."

"I think she's rather like a kitten," Ger persisted, "but I'm glad she can see. I think she likes me rather."

And that was how the Kitten got her name.

She was not a Grantly. She was all Ffolliot, and she was the only one of the children absolutely fearless in the presence of her father.

Small and dark and delicately made, with quick-sighted falcon-coloured eyes that nothing escaped. Unlike her big, healthy brethren, she was never in the slightest degree shy or clumsy, and she cared not a single groat for anyone or anything in the whole wide world so long as she got her own way. And this, being a member of the Ffolliot family, she did not get nearly as often as she would have liked. But she understood her father as did none of the others, and she could "get round him" in a fashion that filled those others with astonished admiration.

She also considerably astonished Mr Ffolliot, for from the very first she was familiar, and familiarity on the part of his children he neither encouraged nor desired. Moreover, she was ubiquitous and elusive. No army of nurses could restrain the Kitten in her peregrinations. She could speak distinctly, run, and run fast, when she was little over a year old, and she possessed a singularly enquiring mind. She was demonstrative but not affectionate; she was enchanting, and stony-hearted was the creature who could resist her. She liked an audience, and she loved to "tell" things. To this end she would sit on your knee and lay one small but determined hand upon your cheek to turn your face towards her, so that she could make sure you were attending. She kept the small hand there, soft and light, a fairy-like caress, unless your attention wandered. If this happened, a sharp little pinch quickly diverted your thoughts into the proper channel. As she pinched you, the Kitten dropped her eyes so that you noticed how long and black were her eyelashes. Then, having punished you, she raised her eyes to yours with so seraphic an expression that you thought of "large-eyed cherubim" and entirely forgot that she had pinched you at all, unless next day as you looked in the glass you happened to notice a little blue mark on your cheek. The Kitten could pinch hard.

She was Ger's greatest joy and his unceasing anxiety. From the very first he had constituted himself her guide, philosopher . . . and slave. Yet the dictatorial little lady found out very early in the day, that in certain things she had to conform to her indulgent brother's standards, the family standards; and though she might be all Ffolliot in certain matters, the Grantly ethics were too strong for her. That Ger should love her, that he should be always kind and protective and unselfish she took as a matter of course; but she wanted him to admire her too, and ready as he was to oblige her in most things, she found that here he was strangely firm. If she told tales or complained of people, or persisted in tiresome teasing when asked politely to desist, Ger withdrew the light of his countenance, and the Kitten was uncomfortable.

To tell tales, or complain, or try to get another into trouble for any reason whatsoever was forbidden. The others had each in their turn accepted this doctrine as they accepted day and night, the sun and moon and stars. The Kitten had to be taught these things, and Ger it was who saw to it that she learned them.

There was a law in the family that if any member of it, after enduring for a space a certain line of conduct from another, said, "Please stop it," that person had to stop, or nemesis, by no means leaden-footed, overtook the offender. It took quite a long time to get it into the Kitten's head that it was a law.

She had an extraordinarily loud and piercing cry when she was angry—a cry that penetrated to the sacred study itself, no matter where she might be in the house.

One day when she was about three years old she was so naughty, so disobedient, so entirely unmanageable at nursery tea, that Nana, the long-suffering, fairly lost her temper. The Kitten placed the final stone on a pillar of wrongdoing by drawing patterns on the tablecloth with a long line of golden syrup dropped from a blob she had secured on her small finger, and Nana gave the chubby hand belonging to the finger a good hard smack. The Kitten opened her mouth and gave vent to a yell almost demoniacal in its volume and intensity.

Mr Ffolliot, reading the Quarterly Review in dignified seclusion, heard it in his study, was convinced that his youngest child was being tortured by the others, and hastened hot-foot to the nursery.

Ger had his fingers in his ears. Nana, flushed and angry, stirred her tea pretending that she didn't hear; Thirza murmured pacific and wholly useless nothings. At her father's sudden and wholly unexpected appearance, accompanied as it was by the swift uprising of both the nurses, the Kitten stopped her clamorous vociferation, and with bunches of tears still hanging on her lashes smiled radiantly at the Squire, announcing with a wave of her sticky little hand.

"'At's fahver."

"What," Mr Ffolliot demanded angrily, "what in heaven's name has been done to that child to make her shriek like that? What happened?"

"Miss Kitten, sir," Nana said slowly, "has not been very good at tea this afternoon."

"But what made her shriek like that?" Mr Ffolliot continued—"a more alarming cry I never heard."

"She smacked me," said the Kitten, glowering at Nana, "she 'urted me"; and at that moment she met Ger's eyes.

The Kitten turned very red.

"Who smacked you?" asked Mr Ffolliot unwisely.

Ger stared at the Kitten, and the Kitten wriggled in her chair.

"Say what you did," muttered Ger, still holding his small sister in compelling gaze.

Nana smiled. She had started with Grantly, and knew the family.

"Fahver," said the Kitten in her most seductive tones, "take me," and she held out her arms.

Mr Ffolliot succumbed. He went round to his youngest daughter and lifted her out of her high chair, only to put her down with exceeding haste a moment later.

"The child is all over some horrible sticky substance," he cried, irritably.

"'At was it," said the Kitten.

Mr Ffolliot fled to wash his hands and change his coat. Nana and Thirza sat down again. Ger shook his head at his small sister. "You are a rotter," he said, sadly.

The Kitten began to cry again, but this time she cried quite softly, and Nana, in spite of the libations of golden syrup, took her upon her knee to comfort her.

Every evening the children went down to the hall to play with their mother, and when their grandparents were there things were more than usually festive. Ganpie never seemed to mind how many children swarmed over him—in fact, he rather seemed to like it; and Grannie assuredly knew more entrancing games than anyone else in the world.

One Christmas Eve, just after tea, the whole family, including Mr Ffolliot, were gathered in the hall. Fusby had just taken the tray, the General was sitting by the fire with Ger on his knee, the Kitten sat on the opposite side of the hearth on her father's, while the rest of the young people indulged in surreptitious "ragging." Uz and Buz, by some mischance, charged into a heavy oaken post crowned by a large palm, with such force that they knocked it over, and the big flower-pot missed their grandfather and Ger by a hair's breadth.

When the universal consternation had subsided, the scattered earth been swept up, and the twins had been suitably reprimanded, the Kitten scrambled down from her father's knee, and trotted across to her grandmother, was duly taken up, and with small insistant hand turned her Grannie's face towards her.

"Which would you rather?" she asked in her high clear voice, "that Ganpie had been killed or Ger?"

Mrs Grantly shuddered—"Baby, don't suggest such dreadful things," she exclaimed.

"But which would you rather?" the Kitten persisted. "You're all saying 'another inch and it would have killed one of zem'—which one would you rather?"

But Mrs Grantly flatly refused to state her preference, and the Kitten was clearly disappointed.

That night she added an additional clause to her prayers: "Thank you, God dear, for not letting the flower-pot kill Ganpie or Ger, and I'm sure Grannie's very much obliged too."

At her prayers the Kitten always knelt bolt upright with her hands tightly clasped under her chin, her nightgown draped in graceful folds about her—a most reverent and saintly little figure, except that she had from the very first firmly refused to shut her eyes.

She was fond of adding a sort of P.S. to her regular prayers, and enjoyed its effect upon her mother, who made a point of, herself, attending the orisons of her two youngest children. One evening when Mrs Ffolliot had been reading her a rather pathetic story of a motherless child, the Kitten added this petition, "Please, God, take care of all the little girls wiv no mummies."

Mrs Ffolliot was touched and related the story afterwards to Uz and Buz, who grinned sceptically.

Next night, when the Kitten had been very naughty, and Mrs Ffolliot had punished her, she repeated her prayers with the greatest unction, and when she reached the usual postscript, fixed her eyes sternly on her mother's face as she prayed fervently, "And please, dear God, take great care of the poor little girls what have got mummies."

A mystically minded friend of Mrs Ffolliot's had talked a good deal of guardian angels to Ger and the Kitten. Ger welcomed the belief with enthusiasm. It appealed at once to his friendly nature, and the thought of an angel, "a dear and great angel," all for himself, specially concerned about him, and there always, though invisible save to the eye of faith, was a most pleasing conception.

Not that it would have pleased Ger unless he had been assured that everyone else had one too. And he forthwith constructed a theory that when people got tired of doing nothing in heaven they came back again and looked after folks down here.

His views of the angel's actual attributes would much have astonished his mother's friend had he expressed them. But Ger said nothing, and quietly constructed an angel after his own heart, who was in point of fact an angelic sort of soldier servant, never in the way, but always there and helpful if wanted.

He could not conceive of any servant who was not also a friend, and having received much kindness from soldiers in the ranks he fixed upon that type as the most agreeable for a guardian angel. And although he greatly admired the two framed pictures of angels the lady had given them to hang in the nursery—Guercino's Angel and Carpaccio's "Tobias and the angels"—his own particular angel was quite differently clad, and was called "Spinks" after a horse gunner he had dearly loved, who was now in India.

The Kitten, far less impressionable, and extremely cautious, was pleased with the idea when it was first mooted, and discussed the question exhaustively with Ger, deciding that her angel had large wings like the one with the child in the picture.

"Does it stay with me in the night-nursery all night?" she enquired.

"'He,' not 'it,'" Ger corrected; "but perhaps yours is a 'she.'"

"I won't have a she," the Kitten said decidedly, for even at four years old she had already learnt that her own sex had small patience with her vagaries.

"You'll have to have what's sent you," Ger said solemnly.

"I won't have a lady angel, so there," said the Kitten, "I'll have a man angel."

"I daresay they'll let you," Ger said soothingly. "A great, big, kind man with wings like you said."

"Has yours got wings?" the Kitten demanded.

"I don't think so," said Ger, "he's not that sort; but," he added proudly, "he's got spurs."

"Will it stay in the nursery all night?" the Kitten asked again rather nervously.

"Of course that's what he's for, to take care of you, so that you'll feel quite safe and happy."

"Oh," said the Kitten, and her voice betrayed the fact that she found this statement far from reassuring.

She said nothing to her mother, and Mrs Ffolliot heard her say her prayers as usual, kissed her, blessed her, and tucked her in. No sooner, however, had Mrs Ffolliot gone down the passage than the most vigorous yells brought her back to the night-nursery, while both Nana and Thirza hastened there also.

The Kitten was sitting up in bed, wide-eyed and apparently more indignant than frightened.

"Take it away," she exclaimed; "open the window and let it out."

"Let what out?" asked the bewildered Mrs Ffolliot.

"The angel," sobbed the Kitten, "I don't want it, I heard its wings rustling and it disturbed me dreffully—I don't want it, open the window wide."

"The window is open at the top," said Mrs Ffolliot; "but why do you want to get rid of an angel? Surely that's a lovely thing to have in the room."

"No," said the Kitten firmly, "I don't like it, and I don't want it. I don't want no angel I haven't seen. I don't like people in my room when I go to sleep."

Nana and Thirza had melted away, only too thankful not to be called upon to arbitrate in the angel question. Mrs Ffolliot and her small daughter stared at each other in the flickering firelight.

"I'm sure," said Mrs Ffolliot, trying hard to steady her voice, "that no self-respecting angel would stay for a minute with a little girl that didn't want him. You may be certain of that."

"A she might," the Kitten suggested suspiciously.

"No angel would," Mrs Ffolliot said decidedly.

"Do you think," the Kitten asked anxiously, "that there's enough room at the top for it to squeege froo? I can't bear those wings rustling."

Mrs Ffolliot switched on the light. "You can see for yourself."

"Thank you, mummy dear, I'll be much happier by myself, really," and the Kitten lay down quite contentedly.



CHAPTER VIII

GENTLEMAN GER

It was the 22nd of December, the younger Ffolliots were gathered in the schoolroom, and Ger was in disgrace.

The twins were back from school, and that afternoon they had unbent sufficiently to take part in a representation of "Sherlock Holmes" in the hall. The whole family, with the exception of the Kitten, had seen the play in the Artillery Theatre at Woolwich during their last visit to grandfather.

It is a play that not only admits of, but necessitates, varied and loud noises.

Everything ought to have gone without a hitch, for earlier in the afternoon Mr Ffolliot had departed in the carriage to take the chair at a lecture in Marlehouse; and a little later Grantly had driven his mother to the station in the dogcart to meet a guest.

Unfortunately the lecture on Carpaccio at the Literary Institute was of unusually short duration, and Mr Ffolliot returned tired and rather cross, just as Ger was enacting the hansom cab accident at the foot of the staircase, by beating a deafening tattoo on the Kitten's bath with a hair-brush.

The twins and the Kitten (who had proved a wrapt and appreciative audience) melted away with Boojum-like stealth the moment the hall door was opened; but Ger, absorbed in the entrancing din he was making, noticed nothing, and his father had to shake him by the shoulders before he would stop.

"I suppose," Ger remarked thoughtfully, "that we must look upon father as a cross."

"He certainly is jolly cross," Uz murmured. "He should hear the row we kick up at school when we've won a match, and nobody says a syllable."

"But I mean," Ger persisted, wriggling about on his seat as though the problem tormented him, "that if father were as nice as mother we'd be too happy, and it wouldn't be good for us; like the people in Fairy stories, you know, when they're too well off, misfortunes come."

"I don't think," Buz said dryly, "that we have any cause to dread misfortunes on that score. But cheer up, Ger, it'll soon be time for the pater to go abroad, and then nobody will get jawed for six long weeks."

"I shouldn't mind the jawings so much or the punishments," said Ger, after a minute's pause, "if it wasn't for mother. She minds so, she never seems to get used to it. I'm glad she was out this afternoon—though we did want her to see the play—but whatever will she say when I can't go down to meet Reggie with the rest of you? And what'll he think?"

Ger's voice broke. Punishment had followed hard on the heels of the crime, and banishment to the schoolroom for the rest of the evening was Ger's lot. Had Mr Ffolliot belonged to a previous generation he would probably, when angry, have whacked his sons and whacked them hard. They would infinitely have preferred it. But his fastidious taste revolted from the idea of corporal punishment, and his ingenuity in devising peculiarly disagreeable penalties in expiation of their various offences, was the cause of much tribulation to his indignant offspring.

"Here is mother!" cried Buz, "and she's got Reggie. Come down and see him you others, but for heaven's sake, come quietly."

The Reggie in question was a young Sapper just then stationed at Chatham, and a "very favourite cousin."

The Ffolliot children were in the somewhat unusual position of having no uncles and aunts, and no cousins of their own, for the sad reason that both their parents were "onlies." Therefore did they right this omission on the part of providence in their own fashion, by adopting as uncles, aunts, and cousins all pleasant guests.

Reggie wasn't even a second cousin; but his people being mostly in India, he had for many years spent nearly all his holidays, and later on his leave, at Redmarley, and he was very popular with the whole family. Even Mr Ffolliot unbent to a dignified urbanity in his presence. He approved of Reggie, who had passed seventh into Woolwich and first into the Sappers, and Grantly always thanked his lucky stars that he was destined for Field Artillery, and was not expected to follow in Reggie's footsteps in the matter of marks.

Ger worshipped Reggie, and it was with a heart full of bitterness, and eyes charged with hot tears that blurred the firelight into long bands of crimson, that he leant against the schoolroom table, alone, while the others all trooped off on tiptoe into the hall to give rapturous though whispered greeting to their guest.

Reggie did not whisper though; the warning cards had no sort of effect upon him, and the forlorn little figure drooping against the table sprang erect and shook the big drops from his cheeks as he heard his cousin's jolly voice "Where's my friend Ger?"—a murmured explanation—then, "O bad luck! I'll go to him—No don't come with me—not for two minutes."

How Ger blessed him for that forethought! To be found in disgrace was bad enough; but to be seen in tears, and by his whole family! . . .

Hastily scraping his cheeks with a corner of his dilapidated Norfolk jacket—if you have ever tried to do this you'll know that it is more or less of a test of suppleness—he went slowly to the door, and in another minute was lifted high into the air and shaken violently by a slight, rather plain young man, who bore with the utmost meekness a passionate embrace highly detrimental to his immaculate collar: and the best of it all was, that he was quite unconscious of the fact that Ger had not met him with the others, nor seemed aware of anything unusual beyond the pleasantness of once more sitting in the big slippery leather-covered arm-chair beside the schoolroom fire, while the rest of the family, having given him exactly the two minutes' start he had demanded, came flocking back to sit all over him and shout their news in an excited chorus.

Next morning, while his father was out in the village, Ger ensconced himself in one of the deep-seated windows of the study, as a quiet haven wherein he might wrestle in solitude with the perfect and pluperfect of the verb esse, which he had promised his mother he would repeat to her that morning.

Their governess had gone home for the holidays, but Ger was so backward that his father insisted that he must do a short lesson (with Mrs Ffolliot) every morning. Ger could not read. It was extraordinary how difficult he found it, and how dull it appeared to him, this art that seemed to come by nature to other people; which, once mastered, appeared capable of giving so much pleasure.

It puzzled Ger extremely.

Mrs Ffolliot had, herself, instructed all her sons in the rudiments of the Latin Grammar, and very well and thoroughly she did it, but so pleasantly, that in their minds the declensions and the conjugations were ever vaguely associated with the scent of violets. The reason for this being, that the instructed one invariably squeezed as close as possible to his teacher, and as there were violets at Redmarley nearly all the year round, Mrs Ffolliot always wore a bunch tucked into her waistband.

It was characteristic of the trust the squire had in his wife's training that he had not the slightest objection to the children using the library when he, himself, was not there to be disturbed, being quite certain that as they had promised her not to touch his writing table, the promise would be faithfully kept. Besides, like all true book-lovers, he was generous in the matter of his books, and provided the children treated them with due care and respect, had no objection to their taking them out of the shelves and reading them.

For a long time there was no sound in the room but an occasional whispered, "fui, fuisti, fuit." Presently Grantly and Mary came in to discuss a fancy-dress dance to which they were bidden that evening at a neighbour's; then, in rushed Reggie in coat and hat with a newly arrived parcel in his hand. Ger had seen the railway van come up the drive, but as he had promised his mother not to move until he had mastered his verb, he did not make his presence known to anyone.

Reggie went over to Mr Ffolliot's desk, and seeing a shilling lying on the table seized it and fled from the room. Three minutes later Ger saw him bowling down the drive in the dog-cart, then Mr Ffolliot returned, and Ger, feeling tolerably certain of the "perfect and pluperfect and future perfect," went slowly upstairs to his mother to repeat it.

All went on peacefully and quietly in the schoolroom for the next half hour, when suddenly Grantly and Mary whirled into the room in a state of such excited indignation as took their mother quite five minutes to discover what all the fuss was about. When at last they had been induced to tell their story separately, and not in a chorus almost oratorio-like in its confusion, Mrs Ffolliot discovered to her dismay that they were accused of meddling with a shilling which their father had placed on the book-club collecting card, ready for the collector when she should call.

When she did call the shilling was gone, and as Grantly and Mary were known to have been in the study, the squire came to the conclusion that one of them must have knocked against his table and brushed it off, and he gave it out that "unless they found it, and thus repaired the mischief and annoyance their carelessness had caused, he would not allow them to go to the dance that evening!"

He never suspected that any member of his family would take the shilling, but he was ready to believe all things of their clumsiness. In vain did Grantly and Mary protest that they had never been near his desk; the squire might have been Sherlock Holmes himself, so certain was he as to the exactitude of his deductions.

"The card has been pushed from where it was originally placed to the extreme edge of the table; the shilling must have been knocked off, and had doubtless rolled under some article of furniture; let them see to it that it was found; they might hunt there and then if they liked, as he would not require the room for half an hour."

The consciousness of their innocence in no way sustained Grantly and Mary under the appalling prospect of losing the party. They had of course hunted frantically everywhere, but naturally had found no trace of the shilling.

Ger sat quite still during the recital of their wrong's, his face growing paler and paler, and his honest grey eyes wider and wider in the horror of his knowledge. For he knew who had taken the shilling, and he knew also that it was his plain duty to right his innocent brother and sister. But at what a cost! He could not tell of Reggie, and yet it was so unlike Reggie for it was . . . even to himself Ger hardly liked to confess what it was—and he had gone off in such a hurry! To Ger, a shilling seemed a very large sum, his own greatest wealth, amassed after many weeks of hoarding, had once reached five pence halfpenny, nearly all in farthings; and he even found himself conjecturing the sort of monetary difficulty into which Reggie had fallen, and from which a shilling might extricate him. He knew there were such things as "debts," and that the army was "very expensive," for he had heard his grandfather say so. Like many extremely upright people Ger was gentle in his judgments of others. Himself of the most crystalline honesty, he could yet conceive of circumstances wherein a like probity might be hard for somebody else: at all costs poor Reggie must be screened, but it was equally clear to him that his brother and sister must not lose the pleasure long looked-forward-to as the opening joy of the holidays.

Now there was about Ger a certain loyalty and considerateness in his dealings with others, that had earned for him the sobriquet of "Gentleman Ger." He was very proud of the title, and his mother, whom he adored, had done all in her power to foster the feeling of noblesse oblige; so Ger felt that here and now a circumstance had arisen which would try what stuff he was made of. The excited talk raged round him like a storm, but after the first he heard none of it. He slipped quietly off his chair, and unnoticed by the group round his mother, left the room and crept down the back staircase. All doubt and questioning was at an end. His duty seemed quite clear to him: he would take the blame of that shilling, Mary and Grantly would go to their party, and Reggie . . . Reggie would not be back till quite late, when he, too, was going to the fancy-dress dance. Reggie need never know anything about it.

By this time he had reached the study door, and stood with his hand upon the handle. And as he waited, screwing his courage to the sticking point, there came into his mind the words of a psalm that he had learned by heart only last Sunday to repeat to his mother. He learned it more easily than usual because he liked it; when she read it to him he found he could remember it, and now, just as a dark room is transiently illumined by the falling together of the fire in sudden flame, there came into Ger's mind the words, "He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not." He turned the handle and went in.

The squire was sitting in his big armchair in front of the fire reading Marius the Epicurean, and trying to compose his nerves, which still vibrated unpleasantly after all the fuss about the shilling. He had even quoted to himself somewhat testily something about "fugitive things not good to treasure"; but whether he referred to the nimbly disappearing shilling, or to the protestations of Grantly and Mary, was not clear. He generally solaced himself with Pater when perturbed, and he had nearly persuaded himself that he was once more nearly attuned to "perfect tone, fresh and serenely disposed of the Roman Gentleman," when Ger opened the door, and walked over towards him without shutting it—an unpardonable offence at any time.

"Gervais," exclaimed the squire, and his tone was the reverse of serene, "Why are you not in the schoolroom? What on earth do you want?"

Ger went back and shut the door carefully and quietly, and once more crossed the room till he stood directly in front of his father. The squire noted with a little pang of compunction how pale the child was. "What is it?" he said more gently.

"Father, I've come about that shilling. I took it."

"You took it," exclaimed the squire in amazement. "Why?"

Here was a poser. Ger was so absolutely unused to lying that he was quite unprepared for any such question as this, so he was silent.

"Why did you take it?" angrily reiterated his father. "And what have you done with it? Answer at once. You know perfectly well that it is a most shocking breach of good manners to ignore a question in this fashion."

"I took it," repeated Ger stupidly, his large grey eyes looking into space beyond his father.

"So I hear," said the squire, growing more and more annoyed. "But why did you take it? and where have you put it?"

"I can't tell you, father," said Ger firmly, and this time he met his father's eyes unflinchingly. To himself he said, "I won't tell more'n one lie for mother's sake."

The squire was dumfoundered by this obstinacy. It was unheard of—absolutely without parallel in his domestic annals—that one of his children should actually flout him! yes! actually flout him with such an answer as this.

"Go and stand over there in that corner," he thundered, "and you shan't move until you can answer my questions, if you stand there for the rest of the day. If you children have nothing else, I am determined that you shall have good manners."

* * * * * *

It was nearly five o'clock, and Ger still stood in the same corner of the study watching the last streak of red fade from the chill January sky. There was no sound in the room save only the soft "plop" of a cinder as it fell on to the tiled hearth. The fire had burned low, and he was very cold. Never in all his life had he gone without his dinner before, and although he was no longer hungry, everything seemed, as he said afterwards, "funny and misty."

The squire had fulfilled his threat. After sending the culprit away to wash his tear-stained face and hands, and to procure a clean handkerchief, he bade him return to stand in the same corner till he should arrive at a proper sense of the respect due to a parent. He had locked the door upon Ger when he went to lunch, and forbade any member of the family, including his wife, to hold any sort of communication with the culprit. Parker the fox-terrier, however, did not obey the squire, and remained in the study with Ger regardless of the fact that the servants' dinner bell had rung, which was also the signal for his own. And to Parker Ger confided the whole story, and very puzzled and unhappy it made him, for he ran between Ger and the door snuffing and whining till the squire came back and turned him out, when he remained upon the mat outside uneasily barking at intervals.

Mrs Ffolliot was almost beside herself with grief and consternation. It was such an inexplicable piece of obstinacy on Ger's part, and he was not usually obstinate.

Grantly and Mary, while relieved that they would still have the opportunity of wearing the dresses which had been the object of so much thought, were really concerned about Ger; it seemed so senseless of him, "why couldn't he say why he wanted the beastly shilling and have done with it?"

The squire himself was very seriously disturbed. He had stormed and raged, he had argued, he had even spoken very kindly and eloquently on the subject of dishonesty, and the necessity there was for full confession before forgiveness could be obtained (this last appeal sorely trying Ger's fortitude), but all to no avail. As the needle points ever to the north, so all the squire's exhortations ended with the same question, to be met with the same answer, growing fainter in tone as the hours wore on, but no less firm in substance. "I can't tell you, father."

Mr Ffolliot could no longer bear the little white-faced figure standing so silently in the corner of the room. He went forth and walked about the garden. He really was a much tried man just then. Only last night Buz, lying in wait for Reggie as he came to bed, had concealed himself in an angle of the staircase, and when his cousin, as he thought, reached his hiding-place, pounced out upon him, blowing out his lighted candle, and exclaiming in a sepulchral voice, "Out, out, damned candle!" (Buz was doing Macbeth at school and had a genius for inept, and generally inaccurate quotation)—then flew up the dark staircase two steps at a time fully expecting hot pursuit, but none came. Dead silence, followed by explosive bursts of smothered laughter from Reggie and Grantly who had followed the squire upstairs. It did not comfort Mr Ffolliot at the present moment to reflect that Buz had had to write out the whole scene in which the "germ," as his father called it, of his misquotation occurred. At present his mind was full of Ger, and ever and anon like the refrain of a song, there thrust into his thoughts a sentence he had been reading when the little boy had interrupted him that morning, "and towards such a full and complete life, a life of various yet select sensation, the most direct and effective auxiliary must be, in a word, insight." "Could it be possible?" he asked himself, "that he was in some way lacking in this quality?"

He turned somewhat hastily and went back into the house. Once more Ger heard the key turn in the lock, and his father came in, followed by Fusby, bearing tea upon a tray.

The front door banged, and Ger's heart positively hammered against his ribs, for no one but Reggie ever dared to bang the Manor House front door. In another minute he had come in, and was standing on the hearth-rug beside Mr Ffolliot, bringing with him a savour of frosty freshness into the warm, still room.

"I got through sooner than I expected," said Reggie, in his big cheery voice, "and caught the two twenty-five, so I walked out. I've been to the stables to tell Heaven he needn't drive in for me after all. O tea! That's good,—where's Aunt Marjory? By the way, uncle, I owe you a shilling. A parcel came for me just as I was starting, and there was a shilling to pay on it. I had no change and was in a tearing hurry, so I took one I saw lying on your desk—hope it was all right."

There was a little soft thud in the far corner of the room, as Ger fell forward on his face, worn out by his long watch, and the rapture of this immense relief.

When things grew clear again the room was full of light and he was lying in his mother's arms. Reggie was kneeling beside him trying to force something in a spoon between his lips, something that smelt, so Ger said, "like a shop in Woolwich" and tasted very queer and hot.

"Lap it up, old chap," whispered Reggie, and Ger wondered why he seemed to have lost his voice. "There now, that's all right. You'll be as fit as possible directly," and Reggie scrambled up from his knees and bolted from the room.

Ger sat up and looked at his father who was standing beside him. The lamp shone full on the squire's face, and he, too, like Reggie, seemed to have got a cold in his eyes; but in spite of this peculiarity, there was that in their expression which told Ger that everything was all right again, and that in this instance absolution without confession had been fully and freely granted.

So Ger, from the safe shelter of his mother's arms, explained, "I couldn't tell more'n one lie because of mother, you know, and I thought he wanted it for debts or something. Is those sangwidges anchovy or jam, do you think?"



CHAPTER IX

THE DANCE

Reggie Peel was not quite sure whether he liked Mary with her hair up or not. The putting up of the hair necessitated a readjustment of his whole conception of her, and . . . he was very conservative.

With Mary the tom-boy child, with Mary the long-legged flapper and good chum, he was affectionately at his ease. He had petted and tormented her by turns, ever since as a boy of ten he had first seen her, a baby a year old, in his Aunt Marjory's arms. Throughout her turbulent but very cheerful childhood he had been her firm, if patronising, friend. Then as she developed into what Ger had described to Eloquent as "a bit of a gawk," he became more than ever her friend and champion. "Uncle Hilary was so beastly down on Mary;" and Mary, though she did knock things over and say quite extraordinarily stupid things on occasion, was "such a good old sort."

He had never considered the question of her appearance till this Christmas. He supposed she was good-looking—all the Ffolliots were good-looking—but it really didn't matter much one way or another. She was part of Redmarley, and Redmarley as a whole counted for a good deal in Reginald Peel's life. He, too, had fallen under its mysterious charm. The manor-house mothered him, and the little Cotswold village cradled him in kindly keeping arms. His own mother had died when he was seven, his father married again a couple of years later; but, as Mr Peel was in the Indian Forest Department, and Reggie's young stepmother a faithful and devoted wife, he saw little of either of them, except on their somewhat infrequent leaves when they paid so many visits and had to see so many people, that he never really got to know either them or his half-brother and sister.

The love of Redmarley had grown with his growth till it became part of him; so far he had looked upon Mary as merely one of the many pleasant circumstances that went to the making of Redmarley. Now, somehow, she seemed to have detached herself from the general design and to have taken the centre of the picture. He was not sure that he approved of such prominence.

She startled him that first evening when, with the others, she met him in the hall. She was unexpected, she was different, and he hated that anything at Redmarley should be different.

"Mary's grown up since yesterday," Uz remarked ironically, "she's like you when you first managed to pull your moustache."

Of course Reggie suitably chastised Uz for his cheek, but all the same there was a difference.

To be sure she still wore her skirts well above her ankles, but nowadays quite elderly ladies wore short skirts, so that in no way accentuated her youth; and after all was she so very young?

Mary would be eighteen on Valentine's day.

Arrayed in Elizabethan doublet and hose for Lady Campion's dance, Reggie stood before his looking-glass and grinned at himself sardonically.

"Ugly devil," he called himself, and then wondered how Mary would look as Phyllida the ideal milkmaid.

Ugly he might be, but his type was not unsuited to the period he had chosen. A smallish head, wide across the brows, well-shaped and poised, with straight, smooth hair that grew far back on the temples and would recede even further as the years went on; humorous bright grey eyes, not large, but set wide apart under slightly marked eyebrows; a pugnacious, rather sharply-pointed nose with a ripple in it. Reggie declared that his nose had really meant well, but changed its mind half way down. His mouth under the fair moustache was not in the least beautiful, but it was trustworthy, neither weak nor sensual, and the chin was square and dogged. His face looked long with the pointed beard he had stuck on with such care, and above the wide white ruff, might well have belonged to some gentleman adventurer who followed the fortunes of Raleigh or Drake. For in spite of its insignificant irregularity of feature there was alert resolve in its expression; a curious light-hearted fixity of purpose that was arresting.

Reggie had never been popular or distinguished at Wellington; yet those masters who knew most about boys always prophecied that "he would make his mark."

It was the same at the "Shop"; although he never rose above a corporal, there were those among the instructors who foretold great things of his future. His pass-out place was a surprise to everyone, himself most of all. He was reserved and did not make friends easily; he got on quite pleasantly with such men as he was thrown with; but he was not a persona grata in his profession. He got through such a thundering lot of work with such apparent ease.

"A decent chap, but a terrible beggar to swat," was the general verdict upon Reginald Peel.

To Mrs Ffolliot and the children he showed a side of his character that was rigidly concealed from outsiders, the truth being that as a little boy he had been very hungry for affection. The Redmarley folk loved him, and his very sincere affection for them was leavened by such passionate gratitude as they never dreamed of.

His face grew very gentle as he gazed unseeingly into the glass. He was thinking of loyal little Ger.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter. He blew out the candles on his dressing-table and fled.

Few gongs or dinner bells were sounded at the Manor House. Mr Ffolliot disliked loud noises. As he ran down the wide shallow staircase into the hall he saw that Mary was standing in the very centre of it, while her father slowly revolved round her in appreciative criticism, quoting the while:—

"The ladies of St James's! They're painted to the eyes; Their white it stays for ever, Their red it never dies; But Phyllida, my Phyllida! Her colour comes and goes; It trembles to a lily,— It warms to a rose—"

This was strictly true, for Mary flushed and paled under her father's gaze, standing there tall and slender in russet gown and white bodice, a milking stool under her arm. She wore "buckled shoon" and a white sunbonnet, and was as fair a maid as a man could see between Christmases.

She was surprised that her father should express his approval thus graciously, but she was not uplifted. It was Mr Ffolliot's way. He had been detestable all day, and now he was going to be charming. His compliments counted for little with Mary. Yesterday he had told her she moved like a Flanders mare, and hurt her feelings very much. Her dress was made in the house and cost about half the price of her shoes and stockings, but Mary was not greatly concerned about her dress. She wanted to go to the dance, to dance all night and see other people.

Mrs Ffolliot, looking tired and pale, was sitting with Ger on an oak settle by the hearth. Ger had been allowed to stay up till dinner time to see his family dressed. The twins were sitting on the floor in front of the fire. Reggie paused on the staircase four steps up, and behind him came Grantly in smock frock (borrowed from the oldest labourer in Redmarley) and neat gaiters as the typical Georgian "farmer's boy" to match Mary's milk-maid.

"Aren't you coming, Aunt Marjory?" Reggie asked. "I thought you were to appear as one of the Ladies of St James's as a foil for Mary."

Mrs Ffolliot shook her head. "I did think of it, but I've got a bad headache. Mary doesn't really need me as a chaperon, it's only a boy and girl dance; besides, you and Grantly can look after her."

Mr Ffolliot went and sat down on the settle beside his wife. "You're much better at home," he said tenderly, "you'd only get tired out sitting up so late."

Grantly and Mary exchanged glances. They knew well enough that Mrs Ffolliot had decided at the last moment that she had better stay at home to look after the twins, who were certain, if left to their own devices, to get into mischief during her absence.

"That rumpus with Ger upset her awfully," Mary whispered to Reggie as they went into dinner, "and she won't risk anything fresh. It is a shame, for she'd have loved it, and she always looks so ripping."

The three young people left directly after dinner. Grantly stopped the carriage at an old Ephraim Teakle's cottage in the village, and they all went in to let him have a look at them, for it was his smock, a marvel of elaborate stitching, that Grantly was wearing.

Ephraim was eighty-seven years old and usually went to bed very early, but to-night he sat up a full hour to see "them childer," as he called the Ffolliots. He was very deaf, but had the excellent sight of a generation that had never learned to read. He stood up as the young people came in, and joined in the chorus of "laws," of "did you evers," indulged in by his granddaughter and her family.

"'Er wouldn' go far seekin' sarvice at mop, not Miss Mary wouldn't," he said; "an' as for you, Master Grantly, you be the very moral of me when I did work for Farmer Gayner over to Winson. Maids did look just like that when I wer a young chap—pretty as pins, they was."

But Mrs Rouse, his granddaughter, thought "Mr Peel did look far an' away the best, something out o' the common 'e were, like what a body sees in the theatre over to Marlehouse . . . but there, I suppose 'tis dressin' up for the likes o' Master Grantly, an' I must say laundry-maid, she done up grandfather's smock something beautiful."

Abinghall, Sir George Campion's place, was just outside Marlehouse town. The house, large and square and comfortable, was built by the first baronet early in the nineteenth century. The Campions always did things well, and "the boy and girl dance" had grown very considerably since its first inception. Indeed, had Mrs Ffolliot realised what proportions it had assumed since she received the friendly informal invitation some five weeks before, she would have risked the recklessness of the twins, and made a point of chaperoning Mary herself.

For the last three generations the Campions had been strong Liberals, therefore it was quite natural that with an election due in a fortnight there should be bidden to the dance many who were not included in Lady Campion's rather exclusive visiting list.

It is extraordinary how levelling an election is, especially at Christmas time, when peace and goodwill are acknowledged to be the prevailing and suitable sentiments.

Even the large drawing-room at Abinghall wouldn't hold the dancers, so a floor and a huge tent had been imported from London, and joined to the house by a covered way. A famous Viennese band played on a stage at one end, and around the sides were raised red baize seats for those who wanted to watch the dancing. Lady Campion received her guests at the door of the large drawing-room; she caught Mary by the arm and held her to whisper rapidly, "I don't know half the people, Mary, do help me, and if you see anyone looking neglected, say a kind word, and get partners, like a dear. I depended on your mother, and now she has failed me."

Naturally the Liberal candidate was bidden to the dance, and Eloquent arrayed in the likeness of one of Cromwell's soldiers, a dress he had worn in a pageant last summer, was standing exactly opposite the entrance to the tent, when at the second dance on the programme Phyllida and the Farmer's Boy came in, and with the greatest good-will in the world proceeded to Boston with all the latest and dreadful variations of that singularly unbeautiful dance. Grantly had imported the very newest thing from Woolwich, Mary was an apt pupil, and the two of them made a point always of dancing the first dance together wherever they were. They were singularly well-matched, and tonight their height, their quaint dress, their remarkable good looks and their, to Marlehouse eyes, extraordinary evolutions, made them immediately conspicuous.

Eloquent, stiff, solemn, and uncomfortable in his wide-leaved hat and flapping collar, watched the smock-frock and russet gown as they bobbed and glided, and twirled and crouched in the mazes of that mysterious dance, and the moment they stopped, shouldered his way through the usual throng of pierrots, flower-girls, Juliets, Carmens, Sikhs, and Chinamen to Lady Campion, who was standing in the entrance quite near the milk-maid who was already surrounded by would-be partners.

"Lady Campion, will you present me to Miss Ffolliot," Eloquent asked in a stand-and-deliver sort of voice, the result of the tremendous effort it had been to approach her at all.

She looked rather surprised, but long apprenticeship to politics had taught her that you must bear all things for the sake of your party, so she smiled graciously on the stiff, rosy-faced Cromwellian, and duly made the presentation.

"May I," Eloquent asked, with quite awful solemnity, "have the pleasure of a dance?"

"I've got twelve or fourteen and an extra, but I can't promise to dance any one of them if other people are sitting out, because I've promised Lady Campion to help see to people. I'll give you one if you'll promise to dance it with someone else—if necessary——"

Eloquent looked blue. "Isn't that rather hard?" he asked meekly.

"Everyone's in the same box," Mary said shortly, "and you, of all people, ought simply to dance till your feet drop off. Let me see your card—What? no dances at all down? Oh, that's absurd—come with me." And before poor Eloquent could protest he found himself being whisked from one young lady to another, and his card was full all except twelve, fourteen, and the second extra—which he rigidly reserved.

"There," said Mary, smiling upon him graciously, "that's well over. I've been most careful; you are dancing with just about an equal number of Liberal and Tory young ladies, and you ought to take at least five mamas into supper; don't forget; look pleased and eager, and be careful what you say to the pretty girl in pink, she's a niece of our present member."

Here a partner claimed Mary, and Eloquent, feeling much as the White King must have felt when Alice lifted him from the hearth to the table (he certainly felt dusted), went to seek one Miss Jessie Bond whose name figured opposite the number on his programme that was just displayed on the bandstand.

He really worked hard. He danced carefully and laboriously—he had had lessons during his last year in London—and entirely without any pleasure. So far, he had fulfilled Mary's instructions to the very letter, except in the matter of looking "pleased and eager." His round, fresh-coloured face maintained its habitual expression of rather prim gravity. The Liberal young ladies, while gratified that he should have danced with them, thought him distinctly dull, the Tory young ladies declared him an insufferable oaf; but Phyllida the tall milk-maid, when she came across him in the dance, nodded and smiled at him in kindly approval. He noticed that she danced several times with the plain young man in the Elizabethan ruff, and that they seemed very good friends.

At last number twelve showed on the bandstand. Eloquent was not very clear as to whether Mary had given him this dance or not, but he went to her to claim it. It came just before the supper dances.

"Yes, this is our dance," said Mary, "shall we one-step for a change?"

"It seems to me," said Eloquent mournfully, "that one does nothing but change all the time. Now this is a waltz, how can you one-step to a waltz?"

"Poor man," Mary remarked pityingly. "It is muddling if you're not used to it. Let us waltz then, that will be a change."

Once round the room they went, and Eloquent felt that never before had he realised the true delight of dancing. He was very careful, very accurate, and his partner set herself to imitate exactly his archaic style of dancing, so that they were a model of deportment to the whole room. But it was only for a brief space that this poetry of motion was vouchsafed to him.

Mary stopped.

"Do you see," she asked, "that old lady near the band. She has been sitting there quite alone all the evening and she must be dying for something to eat. Don't you think you'd better take her to have some refreshment?"

"No," said Eloquent decidedly, "not just now. I've been dancing with all sorts of people with whom I didn't in the least desire to dance solely because you said I ought, and now I'm dancing with you and I'm not going to give it up. May we go on again?"

Again they waltzed solemnly round. Again Eloquent felt the thrill that always accompanies a perfect achievement. Again Mary stopped.

"That old lady is really very much on my conscience," she said; "if you won't take her in to have some supper, I must get Reggie, he'd do it."

"But why now?" Eloquent pleaded. "If, as you say, she has sat there all night, a few minutes more or less can make no difference—why should we spoil our dance by worrying about her? Do you know her?"

"I don't think I know her," Mary said vaguely, "but I have an idea she has something to do with coal. She's probably one of your constituents, and I think it's rather unkind of you to be so uninterested; besides, what does it matter whether one knows her or not, she's here to enjoy herself, it's our business to see that she does it. . . ."

"Why our business?" In a flash Eloquent saw he had made a mistake. Mary looked genuinely surprised this time.

"Why, don't you think in any sort of gathering it's everybody's business . . . if you see anyone lonely . . . left out . . . one tries. . . ."

"I've been lonely and left out at dozens of parties in London, where I didn't know a soul, and I never discovered that anyone was in the least concerned about me. At all events no one ever tried to ameliorate my lot."

"But you're a man, you know. . . ."

"A man can feel just as out of it as a woman. It's worse for him in fact, for it's nobody's business to look after him."

Eloquent spoke bitterly.

"But surely since you, yourself, have suffered, you ought to be the more sympathetic with that stout lady——"

"I will go, since you wish it; but I don't know her and she may think it impertinent. . . ."

"I'll come too," said Mary. "I don't know her but I can introduce you . . . we'll both go."

The lady in question was stout and rubicund, with smooth, tightly-braided brown hair, worn very flat and close to the head, and bright observant black eyes. She wore a high black satin dress, and had apparently been poured into it, so tight was it, so absolutely moulded to her form. A double gold chain was arranged over her ample bosom, and many bracelets decorated her fat wrists. She was quite alone on the raised red seat. For the last two hours Mary had noticed her sitting there, and that no one, apparently, ever spoke to, or came to sit by her.

There she remained placidly watching the dancers, her plump ungloved hands folded in her lap. She appeared rather cold for she wore no wrap, and what with draughts and the breeze created by the dancers, the tent was a chilly place to sit in.

Mary mounted the red baize step and sat down beside the solitary one.

"Don't you think it's time you had something to eat?" she shouted . . . they were so near the band, which at that moment was braying the waltz song from the "Quaker Girl." The old lady beamed, but shook her head:

"I'm very well where I am, my dear, I can see nicely and I'm glad I came."

"But you can come back," Mary persisted. "This gentleman"—indicating Eloquent—"will take you to have some supper, and then he'll bring you back again just here if you like. . . . May I introduce Mr Gallup? Mrs . . . I fear I don't know your name. . . ."

Eloquent stood below bowing stiffly, and offered his arm. The lady stood up, chuckled, winked cheerfully at Mary, and stepped down on to the floor.

"Well, since you are so obliging," she said, and took the proffered arm. "You don't know me, Mr Gallup," she continued, "but you will do before the election's over. Don't look so down in the mouth, I shan't keep you long, just a snack's all I want, and to stamp my feet a bit, which they're uncommonly cold, and then you can go back to the sweet pretty thing that fetched you to do the civil—oh, I saw it all! what a pity she's the other side, isn't it? what a canvasser she'd make with that smile . . . well, well, there's many a pretty Tory lady married a Radical before this and changed her politics, so don't you lose heart . . . soup, yes, I'd fancy some soup . . . well, what a sight to be sure . . . and how do you feel things are going in the constituency? . . ."

But Eloquent had no need to answer. His charge kept up a continual flow of conversation, only punctuated by mouthfuls of food. When at last he took her back to the seat near the band, Mary had gone to supper and was nowhere to be seen.

"I'm much obliged to you, Mr Gallup," said the lady, "though you wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been forced. Now let an old woman give you a bit of advice. . . . Look willin' whether you are or not."

Poor Eloquent felt very much as though she had boxed his ears. A few minutes later he saw that the Elizabethan gentleman and Mary were seated on either side of his recent partner and were apparently well amused.

How did they do it?

And presently when Reggie Peel and Mary passed him in the Boston he heard Peel say, "Quite the most amusing person here to-night. I shall sit out the next two dances with her, I'm tired."

"I was tired too, that's why . . ." they went out of earshot, and he never caught the end of the sentence.

Eloquent danced no more with Mary, nor did he sit out at all with the indomitable old lady, who, bright-eyed and vigilant, still watched from her post near the band. The end was really near, and he stood against the wall gloomily regarding Mary as she flew about in the arms—very closely in the arms as ruled by the new dancing—of a young barrister. He was staying with the Campions and had, all the previous week, been helping heartily in the Liberal cause. He had come down from London especially to do so, but during Christmas week there was a truce on both sides, and he remained to enjoy himself.

Just then Eloquent hated him. He hated all these people who seemed to find it so easy to be amusing and amused. Yet he stayed till the very last dance watching Phyllida, the milkmaid, with intense disapproval, as, her sun-bonnet hanging round her neck, she tore through the Post Horn Gallop with that detestable barrister. He decided that the manners of the upper classes, if easy and pleasant, were certainly much too free.

It was a fine clear night and he walked to his rooms in Marlehouse. He felt that he had not been a social success. He was much more at home on the platform than in the ball-room, yet he was shrewd enough to see that his lack of adaptability stood in his way politically.

How could he learn these things?

And as if in answer to his question, there suddenly sounded in his ears the fat chuckling voice of the black satin lady:

"Well, well, there's many a pretty Tory lady married a Radical before this, and changed her politics, so don't you lose heart."



CHAPTER X

"THE GANPIES"

"Father's mother," living alone far away in the Forest of Dean, rarely came to Redmarley, and the children never went to visit her. A frail old lady to whom one was never presented save tidily clad and fresh from the hands of nurse for a few moments, with injunctions still ringing in one's ears as to the necessity for a quiet and decorous demeanour.

This was grandmother, a shadow rather than a reality.

The Ganpies were something very different. The name, an abbreviation for grandparents, was invented by Grantly when he was two years old, and long usage had turned it into a term of endearment. People who knew them well could never think of General and Mrs Grantly apart, each was the complement of the other; and for the Ffolliot children they represented a dual fount of fun and laughter, understanding and affection. They were the medium through which one beheld the never-ending pageant unrolled before the entranced eyes of such happy children as happened to "belong" gloriously to one "commanding the R.A. Woolwich." And intercourse with the Ganpies was largely leavened by concrete joys in the shape of presents, pantomimes, tips, and all things dear to the heart of youth all the world over.

Such were the Ganpies. Nothing shadowy about them. They were a glorious reality; beloved, familiar, frequent.

They were still comparatively young people when their daughter married, and Mrs Grantly was a grandmother at forty-one. They would have liked a large family themselves, but seeing that Providence had only seen fit to bestow on them one child, they looked upon the six grandchildren as an attempt to make amends.

Mrs Grantly's one quarrel with Marjory Ffolliot was on the score of what she called her "niggardliness and greed," in refusing to hand over entirely one of the six to their grandparents.

It is true that the large house on the edge of Woolwich Common was seldom without one or two of the Ffolliot children. Mr Ffolliot was most accommodating, and was more then ready to accept the General's constant invitations to his offspring; but in spite of these concessions Mrs Grantly was never wholly satisfied, and it was something of a grievance with her that Marjory was so firm in her refusal to "give away" any one of the six.

Casual observers would have said that Mrs Grantly was by far the stronger character of the two, but people who knew General Grantly well, realised that his daughter had her full share of his quiet strength and determination. Mrs Ffolliot, like her father, was easy-going, gentle, and tolerant; it was only when you came "up against" either of them that you realised the solid rock beneath the soft exterior.

Now there was nothing hidden about Mrs Grantly. She appeared exactly what she was. Everything about her was definite and decided, though she was various and unexpected as our British weather. She was an extraordinary mixture of whimsicality and common sense, of heroic courage and craven timidity, of violence and tenderness, of impulsiveness and caution. In very truth a delightful bundle of paradox. Quick-witted and impatient, she had yet infinite toleration for the simpleton, and could on occasion suffer fools with a gladness quite unshared by her much gentler daughter or her husband. But the snob, the sycophant, and, above all, the humbug met with short shrift at her hands, and the insincere person hated her heartily. She spoke her mind with the utmost freedom on every possible occasion, and as she had plenty of brains and considerable shrewdness her remarks were generally illuminating.

The villagers at Redmarley adored her, for, from her very first visit she made her presence felt.

It had long been the custom at Redmarley for the ladies in the village and neighbourhood to meet once a week during the earlier winter months to make garments for presentation to the poor at Christmas, and the first meeting since the Manor House possessed a mistress took place there under Mrs Ffolliot's somewhat timid presidency. It coincided with Mrs Grantly's first visit since her daughter's marriage, and she expressed her willingness to help.

At Mrs Ffolliot's suggestion it had already been arranged that a blouse instead of a flannel petticoat should this year be given to the younger women. The other ladies had fallen in graciously with the idea (they were inclined to enthuse over the "sweet young bride"), and according to custom one Miss Tibbits, a spinster of large leisure and masterful ways, had undertaken to procure the necessary material. For years donors and recipients alike had meekly suffered her domination. She chose the material, settled what garments should be made and in what style, and who should receive them when made.

On the afternoon in question Miss Tibbits duly descended from her brougham, bearing a parcel containing the material for the blouses which Mrs Grantly volunteered to cut out. Miss Tibbits undid the parcel and displayed the contents to the nine ladies assembled round the dining-room table.

Mrs Grantly was seen to regard it with marked disapproval, and hers was an expressive countenance.

"May I ask," she began in the honeyed, "society" tone that in her own family was recognised as the sure precursor of battle, "why the poor should be dressed in dusters?"

The eight ladies concentrated their gaze upon the roll of material which certainly did bear a strong resemblance to the bundles offered by drapers at sale times as "strong, useful, and much reduced."

"It is the usual thing," Miss Tibbits replied shortly, "we have to consider utility, not ornament."

Mrs Grantly stretched across the table, swiftly seized the material, gathered it up under her chin, and with a dramatic gesture stood up so that it fell draped about her.

"Look at me!" she exclaimed. "If I had to wear clothes made of stuff like this, I should go straight to the Devil!"

And at that very moment, just as she proclaimed in a loud voice the downward path she would tread if clad in the material Miss Tibbits had selected, the door was opened, and Mr Molyneux was announced.

The ladies gasped (except Marjory Ffolliot, who had dissolved into helpless laughter at the sight of her large and portly parent draped in yards of double-width red and brown check), but Mrs Grantly was no whit abashed.

"Look at me, Mr Molyneux," she cried. "Can you conceive any self-respecting young woman ever taking any pleasure in a garment made of this?"

"A garment," the vicar repeated in wonderment, "is it for a garment?"

"Yes, and not an undergarment either," Mrs Grantly retorted. "Now you are here, you shall tell us plainly . . . are the things we are to make supposed to give any pleasure to the poor creatures or not."

"I should say so most assuredly," the vicar replied, his eyes twinkling with fun. "What other purpose could you have?"

Miss Tibbits cleared her throat. "I have always understood," she said primly, "that the sewing club was instituted to make useful garments for deserving persons, who were, perhaps, so much occupied by family cares that they had little time available for needle-work."

"That is," said the vicar solemnly, "the laudable object of the sewing club."

"But I don't suppose," Mrs Grantly remarked briskly, still standing draped in the obnoxious material, "that there is any bye-law to the effect that the garments should be of an odious and humiliating description."

"Of course not," the ladies chorussed, smiling. They were beginning, all but Miss Tibbits, who was furious, to enjoy Mrs Grantly.

"Then let us," Mrs Grantly's voice suddenly became soft and seductive, and she flung the folds of material from her, "give them something pretty. They don't have much, poor things, and it's just as easy to make them pretty as ugly. Ladies, I've been to a good many sewing meetings in my life, and I always fight for the same thing, a present should be just a little bit different—don't you think—not hard and hideous and ordinary. . . ."

"That material is bought and paid for," Miss Tibbits interrupted, "it must be used."

"It shall be used," cried Mrs Grantly, "I'll buy it, and I'll make it into dusters for which purpose it was obviously intended, and every woman in Redmarley shall have two for Christmas as an extra. A good strong duster never comes amiss."

"Perhaps," Miss Tibbits said coldly, "you will undertake to procure the material."

"Certainly," said Mrs Grantly, "but I'll buy it in blouse lengths, and every one different. Why should a whole village wear the same thing as though it was a reformatory?"

It appeared that the vicar had called with his list of the "deserving poor." In five minutes Mrs Grantly had detached each person, and made a note of her age and circumstances. She had only been in the village a week, and she already knew every soul in it.

She whirled off the vicar in a gale of enthusiasm, nobody else got a word in edgewise. Finally she departed with him into the hall, and saw him out at the front door, and her last whispered words were characteristic:

"You've let that Tibbits woman bully you for twenty years, now I'm going to bully you for a bit instead, and between us we'll give those poor dears a bit of cheer this Christmas."

From that moment the vicar was Mrs Grantly's slave.

Nobody knew how the affair leaked out, but the whole thing was known in the village before a week had passed, with the result that fifteen women visited the vicar, one after the other, and after much circumlocution intimated that "If so be as 'e would be so kind, they'd be glad if 'e'd 'int to the ladies as they 'adn't nearly wore out last Christmas petticoat, and, if it were true wot they'd 'eard as they was talkin' of givin' summat different, might Mrs Mustoe, Gegg, Uzzel, or Radway, etc., have anything they did choose to make as warn't a petticoat."

There was a slump in petticoats.

In despair he went to Mrs Grantly, and she undertook to see the matter through.

"It's absurd," Mrs Grantly remarked to her daughter, "in a little place like this where one knows all the people, and exactly what they're like, to make things all the same size. Fancy me trying to get into a blouse that would fit that skinny Miss Tibbits! A little common sense is what's needed in this sewing society, and, Marjory, my dear, I'm going to do my best to supply it."

* * * * * *

Throughout the years that followed, Mrs Grantly continued to supply common sense to the inhabitants of Redmarley. She found places for young servants, both in her own household and those of her friends, till gradually there were many links between the village and "'Orse and Field and Garrison."

More than one Redmarley damsel married a gunner "on the strength." Had the intending bridegroom been anything else, Mrs Grantly would herself have forbidden the banns!



CHAPTER XI

CHRISTMAS AT REDMARLEY

That year Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, and on the Saturday afternoon Eloquent drove out from Marlehouse to Redmarley to spend the week-end with his aunt. She was out when he arrived, and he went straight to the vicarage, asked for the vicar, and was shown into the study, where Mr Molyneaux sat smoking by the fire in a deep-seated high-backed chair.

Even as he entered the room, Eloquent was conscious of the pleasurable thrill that things beautiful and harmonious never failed to evoke. The windows faced west; the red sun, just sinking behind Redmarley Woods, shone in on and was reflected from walls covered from floor to ceiling with books; books bound for the most part in mellow brown and yellow calf, that seemed to give forth an amber light as from sun-warmed turning beeches.

The vicar had discarded his clerical coat, and wore a shabby grey-green Norfolk jacket frayed at the cuffs; nevertheless, Eloquent sincerely admired him as he rose to give courteous greeting to his guest.

The old vicar was stout and bald, and the grey hair that fringed his head was decidedly rumpled. A long face, with high, narrow forehead and pointed beard, cheeks heavy and creased, straight nose, with strongly marked, sensitive nostrils. The mouth, full-lipped and shutting firmly under the grey moustache, cut straight across the upper lip; the eyes, rather prominent blue eyes, had once been bold and merry, and were still keen. A fine old face, deeply lined and sorrowful, bearing upon it the impress of great possibilities that had remained—possibilities. He was somehow in keeping with his room, this warm, untidy, comfortable room that smelt of tobacco and old leather, where there was such a curious jumble of things artistic and sporting: a few pictures and bas-reliefs, nearly all of the pre-Renaissance Italian School, a big stuffed trout in a glass case, a fox's brush and mask, an old faded cricket cap; and over the carved mantelshelf, the portrait of a Georgian beauty in powder and patches, whose oval face, heavy-lidded eyes, and straight features were not unlike the vicar's own.

There was in the vicar's manner the welcoming quality that puts the shyest person at his ease. He was secretly much surprised that young Gallup should call upon him; but no hint of this appeared in his manner, and Eloquent found no difficulty in stating the object of his visit with business-like directness.

"I came to ask you," he remarked with his usual stiff solemnity, "if you would care for me to read the lessons at morning service to-morrow. . . . I do not read badly. . . . I have studied elocution."

The humorous lines round the old vicar's eyes deepened, but he answered with equal gravity, "That is very good of you, and I gratefully accept your kind offer. General Grantly has promised to read the first lesson, but I shall be glad if you will read the second. Will you do both at the afternoon service? There's no evensong on Christmas Day."

This was rather more than Eloquent had bargained for, but . . . she might come to the afternoon service as well. "I shall be most happy," he said meekly, "to do anything I can to assist."

The vicar rang for tea, but Eloquent arose hastily, saying he had promised to have tea with his aunt. He had no desire to prolong the interview with this urbane old gentleman now that its object was achieved. Mr Molyneux saw him to the front door and watched him for a moment as he bustled down the drive. "So that," he said to himself, as he went back to the warm study, "is our future member . . . for everyone says he will get in. Why does he want to read the lessons, I wonder? It will certainly do him no good with his dissenting constituents, and it is they who will get him in—what can his object be?"

The Ffolliot family formed quite a procession as they marched up the aisle on Christmas morning. General and Mrs Grantly were there; Reggie, Mr and Mrs Ffolliot, and the six young Ffolliots. They overflowed into the seat behind, and the Kitten, whom nothing ever awed or subdued, was heard to remark that since she couldn't sit with Willets, the keeper, who always had "such instasting things in his pottets," she'd sit "between the Ganpies." Reggie, Mary, and her four brothers filled the second seat: Mary sat at the far end, and Ger nearest the aisle, that he might gaze entrancedly at his grandfather while he read the lesson. Reggie came next to Ger, and Grantly separated Uz and Buz, so that Eloquent only caught an occasional glimpse of Mary's extremely flat back between the heads of other worshippers.

"Oh come, all ye faithful!" the choir sang lustily as it started in procession round the church, and the faithful responded vigorously. The Kitten pranced on her hassock, and always started the new verse before everyone else in the clearest of pure trebles. The Ffolliot boys shouted, and for once Mr Ffolliot forebore to frown on them. No woman with a houseful of children can remain quite unmoved on Christmas morning during that singularly jubilant invocation, and Mrs Grantly and Margery Ffolliot ceased to sing, for their eyes were full of tears. Mr Ffolliot fixed his monocle more firmly, and bent forward to look at the Kitten, and to catch her little pipe above the shouts of her brothers behind.

The Kitten sang words of her own composition during the Psalms, her grandparents both singing loudly themselves in their efforts not to hear her, for the Kitten's improvisations were enough to upset the gravity of a bench of bishops.

The General read the first lesson in a brisk and business-like monotone, and when he had finished his grandsons applauded noiselessly under the book-board.

The Kitten was very much to the fore during "Praise him and magnify him for ever," and then came the second lesson.

Eloquent walked up the aisle and took his stand at the lectern with the utmost unconcern. Shy and awkward he might be in ordinary social intercourse, but whenever it was a matter of standing up before his fellow-creatures and haranguing them, his self-consciousness dropped from him like a discarded garment, and he instantly acquired a mental poise and serene self-confidence wholly lacking at other times.

The second lesson on Christmas morning contains the plainest possible statement of a few great facts, and Eloquent proclaimed them in a singularly melodious voice with just exactly the emphatic simplicity they demanded.

The perfect sincerity of great literature is always impressive. All over the church heads were turned in the direction of the lectern, and when the short lesson ended the Kitten demanded in a quite audible voice, "Why did he stop so soon for?"

Eloquent looked at Mary as he passed down the aisle to his place, half-hoping she might meet his glance with the frank confident smile he found so disturbing and delicious. But her eyes were bent upon her prayer-book and she appeared quite unconscious that someone had just been reading the Bible exceptionally well.

He felt chilled and disappointed. "It is quite possible," he reflected bitterly, "that in this out-of-the-way old church they don't know good reading from bad."

There is no sermon at Redmarley on Christmas morning, and people who have been at the early service get out soon after twelve o'clock. Eloquent waited in the churchyard and watched the young Ffolliots and Reggie Peel come out. Mary saw him and nodded cheerfully, but she did not, as he felt might have been expected, come up to him and exclaim, "How beautifully you read!"