The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

BOOK THREE

BOOK OF THE HAPPY, HAPPY TIME.
THE ELEMENT OF YOUTH

CHAPTER I

PERCIVAL HAS A PEEP AT THE 'NORMOUS

I

Young Percival was seven—rising eight—when he first saw Burdon Old Manor. Miss Oxford had taken him for a walk, and they were in the direction of the Manor grounds, a locality she commonly avoided, when "There's a cart coming!" he warned her. He had lagged behind, exploring in a dry ditch; and he raced up to her with the news, catching her hand and drawing her to the hedge, for she had been walking in the middle of the road, occupied with her thoughts.

Percival had learnt to be accustomed to long silences in his Aunt Maggie and to rescue her from them when need arose. They were familiar, too, to all the villagers and to the "help" who was now required for the domestic work of "Post Offic." Not the same but a very different Miss Oxford had returned to "Post Offic" seven years ago, bringing the news of poor, pretty Miss Audrey's loss of husband and death, and bringing the little mite that was born orphan, bless him. A very different Miss Oxford, for whose characteristic alertness there was substituted a profound quietness, a notable air of absence, preoccupation. It was held by the villagers that she had gone a little bit strange-like. Her sister's death, it was thought, had made her a little touched-like. The "help," a gaunt and stern creature named Honor, who largely devoted herself to bringing up Percival on a system of copy-book and devotional maxims which had become considerably mixed in her mind, called her mistress's lapses into long silence symptoms of an "incline," and in kindly, rough fashion sought to rally her from them. Percival, nearest the truth, called them "thinking." When Aunt Maggie lapsed into such a mood, he would often stand by her, watching her face doubtfully and rather wistfully, with his head a little on one side. Presently he would give a little sigh and run off to his play. It was as though he puzzled to know what occupied her, as though he had some dim, unshaped idea which, while he stood watching, he tried to formulate—and the then little sigh: he could not discover it—yet.

What was clear was that nothing ever aroused Aunt Maggie from her strange habit of mind; and that at least is symptom of a dangerous melancholy. What was plain was that her fits of complete, of utter abstraction, embraced her like a sudden physical paralysis in the midst of even an energetic task or an absorbing conversation; and that at least is sign of a lesion somewhere in the faculty of self-control. She divided her time between those periods of "thinking" and an intense devotion to Percival; and the two phases acted directly one upon the other. It was in the midst of loving occupation with the child, that, perhaps at some look in his eyes, perhaps at some note in his voice, abstraction would suddenly strike down upon her; it was from the very depth of such abstraction that she would suddenly start awake and go to find Percival or, he being near her, would take him almost violently into her arms.

II

In characteristic keeping with this habit, her action when now he ran to her and drew her from the roadway with his cry, "There's a cart coming! A cart, Aunt Maggie!" Her grey, gentle face and her sad eyes irradiated with a sudden colour and sudden light that advertised the affection with which, standing behind him to let the cart pass, she stooped down to him and kissed his glowing cheek—"Would I have been run over, do you think?"

Percival was eagerly awaiting the excitement of seeing the cart come into view around the bend whence it sounded. But he stretched up his hands to fondle her face. "Well, I believe you would, you know," he declared. "Of course they'd have shouted, but suppose the horse was bobbery and wouldn't stop?"

Aunt Maggie feigned alarm at this dreadful possibility. "Oh, but you're all right with me," Percival reassured her. He had a quaint habit of using phrases of hers. "I keep an eye on you, you know, even when I'm far behind."

She laughed and looked at him proudly; and she had reason for her pride. At seven—rising eight—Percival had fairly won through the vicissitudes of a motherless infancy. He had come through a lusty babyhood and was sprung into an alert and beautiful childhood, dowered of his father's strong loins, of his mother's gentle fairness, that caused heads to turn after him as he raced about the village street.

Heads turned from the cart that now approached and passed. It proved to be a wagonette. Two women and a man sat among the many packages behind. On the box-seat, next the driver, was a lanky youth, peculiarly white and unhealthy of visage. Percival stared at him. In envy perhaps of the sturdy and glowing health of the starer, the lanky youth scowled back, and lowering his jaw pulled a grimace with an ease and repulsiveness that argued some practice. Turning in his seat, he allowed Percival to appreciate the distortion to the full.

This was that same Egbert Hunt, whose power of grimace opened, as it continues, our history.

Percival directed an interested face to Aunt Maggie. "Is that a clown sitting up there?" he asked her. He had accompanied Aunt Maggie into Great Letham on the previous day, and had been much engaged by the chalked countenance of a clown, grinning from posters of a coming circus.

Aunt Maggie answered him with her thoughts: "I think they must be going to the Manor, dear. I expect they are Lord Burdon's servants."

"Well, I'm sure he was a clown," Percival answered. But a few paces farther up the road, stepping into it from a footpath over the fields, a little old gentleman was met, whom Aunt Maggie greeted as Mr. Amber, and who verified her opinion.

"The family is coming down the day after to-morrow," Mr. Amber said, "as I was telling you last week. Servants are to arrive to-day. I think I saw them in the wagonette as I came down the path. And how are you, Master Percival? I hope you are very well."

Percival put his small hand into the extended palm. "I'm very well, Mr. Amber, thank you. One of them was a clown, you know. He made a face at me—like this."

"God bless my soul, did he indeed?" Mr. Amber exclaimed.

"Yes, he did," said Percival. "Just make it back again to me, will you please, so I can see if I showed you properly?"

But Mr. Amber declined the experiment. "The wind might change while I was doing it," he said, "and then I should be like that always."

"Oh, I shouldn't mind," Percival declared.

"But I should," said Mr. Amber, and poked Percival with his stick.

They were very close friends, Percival and this bent old librarian, permanently located at Burdon Old Manor in those days and a constant visitor at "Post Offic" for the purpose of enjoying the affection displayed in his silvery old face as it watched the glowing young countenance upturned to it. "But I should," said he; "and what would they think of me in there?"

Percival turned about. They had reached the boundary of the Manor grounds and he pointed through the trees. "Is that where you live, Mr. Amber?"

"Yes, I live in there. Look here, now, here's a nice thing! You're growing up nearly as big as me and you've never been to see me. That's not friendly, you know."

"Oh, but I've wanted to, you know," Percival cried. "We don't often come this way, you see, do we, Aunt Maggie?"

He bounded across the road to squint through the wooden paling that surrounds the Manor park, and Mr. Amber gave a little sigh and turned to Aunt Maggie.

"How Percival grows, Miss Oxford! And what a picture, what a picture! You know, he recalls to me walking these lanes twenty years ago, with just his counterpart in looks and spirits and charm—ah, well! dear me, dear me!" And he began to mumble to himself in the fashion of old people whose thoughts run more easily in the past than in the present, and to walk around poking with his stick in a fashion that was his own.

He referred to Roly, Aunt Maggie knew. "You never forget him, do you?" she said gently. She also was devoted to a memory. "You never forget him?"

"No—no," said Mr. Amber, poking around and not looking at her. "Certainly not—certainly not."

Percival's voice broke in upon them, announcing his observations through the fence. "I say, you've got a lovely garden to play in, you know," he called.

They turned from thoughts that had a common element to the bright young spirit in whom those thoughts found a not dissimilar relief.

"Well, it's not exactly my garden," Mr. Amber replied in his deliberate way. "I live there just like Honor lives with you. She looks after the cooking and I look after the books, eh? Would you like to see my books?"

"Picture books?"

"Why, yes, some have got pictures. Yes, there are pictures in some. And fine big rooms, Percival. You would like to see them."

Percival turned an excited face to Aunt Maggie, and Aunt Maggie smiled. He took Mr. Amber's hand. "Thank you very much indeed," he said. "I tell you what, then. I will see your books and then I think you will let me play in your garden, please, if you please?"

Mr. Amber declared that this was a very fair bargain. "Come in and have some tea, Miss Oxford. Mrs. Ferris will be glad to see you. She finds housekeeping very dull work, I am afraid, with only me to look after."

Aunt Maggie did not reply immediately. Percival looked at her anxiously. He observed signs of "thinking," and thinking might be fatal to this most engaging proposition. "If you possibly could, Aunt Maggie!" he pleaded.

But it was Mr. Amber's further argument that persuaded her. His words acutely entered the matter with which she was occupied. "You know, Percival must be the only soul in the countryside that hasn't seen the Manor," he urged. "It was the regular custom for any one who liked to come up in the old days. You recollect the Tenant Teas in the summer? Why, it's his right, I declare."

A little colour showed on her cheeks. "Yes, it is his right," she said.

III

Percival was to enjoy another right before the day was out. The decision to accept Mr. Amber's invitation once made, he had whooped ahead through the Manor gates and flashed up the long drive at play with a game of his own among the flanking trees. A noble turn in the avenue brought him within astonished gaze of the house, and, very flushed in the cheeks, he came racing back to his elders.

"I say, it's a perfectly 'normous house you live in, Mr. Amber."

"Aha!" cries old Mr. Amber, highly pleased. "I knew you would like it, Master Percival!"

"Why, I call it a castle!" Percival declares.

They turn the corner and Mr. Amber points with his stick. "Well, you're not quite wrong, either. That part—the East Wing we call that—you see how old that is? Almost a castle once, that. See those funny little marks? Used to be holes there to fire guns through. What do you think of that?"

Percival's face proclaims what he thinks—and his voice, deep with awe, says, "Fire them bang?"

"Bang? I should think so, indeed!"

"Who at?"

"Aha! Strange little boys, perhaps. I'll tell you all about it, if you'll come and see me sometimes."

Percival announces that he will come every single day, and runs eagerly up the five broad steps that lead to the great oak door, now standing ajar, and halts wonderingly upon the threshold to gaze around the spacious hall and up at the gallery that encircles it.

Aunt Maggie stops so abruptly and gives so strange a catch at her breath that Mr. Amber turns to look at her. Following her eyes, and reading what he fancies in them, "Why, he does make a brave little picture, standing there, doesn't he?" Mr. Amber says.

Her faint smile seems to assent. But she sees the child, framed in the fine doorway, as his father's son surveying for the first time the domain that is his own.

They join him on the threshold and he turns to them round-eyed. "Why, it's simply 'normous!" he declares. "Aunt Maggie, come and look with me. It's simply 'normous."

"Told you so!" cries Mr. Amber, vastly delighted. "Fine big rooms, I said, didn't I, now?"

"'Normous!" Percival breathes. "Per-feck-ly 'normous to me, you know;" and after a huge sigh of wonder, pointing to the gallery, "What's that funny little bridge up there for?"

"Bridge!" says Mr. Amber almost indignantly. "Gallery, we call that. Goes right around the hall, see? Except this end. Bridge! Bless my soul, bridge!" For the moment he is really almost put out at this slight done to a celebrated feature of the Manor, his concern betraying the profound devotion to the house, the sense of his own incorporation with it, that always characterises him when beneath its roof. That devotion and that sense have deepened greatly during these years in which the new Burdons have neglected the Manor and he, living in the past, has grown to feel himself the custodian of the memories as he is the author of the "Lives" of the house of Burdon. He has a trick, indeed, as Percival comes to know, of speaking of "we" when he talks of himself in connection with the Manor. He uses it now. "We are very proud of that gallery, I can tell you. Do you know we've had—well, well, never mind about that now. Come along, I'll take you all over and up there, too. Come along, Miss Oxford. We'll find Mrs. Ferris first."

Mr. Amber takes Percival's hand and starts up the hall; and then pulls him up short again, but with an exaggerated concern this time. "But here, I say, young man, what's this? Cap on! Good gracious, you can't wear your cap here, you know!"

Percival goes almost as red as the jolly red fisher cap he wears, and pulls it off, much abashed. He explains his breach of manners. "I always do take it off in a house. But this doesn't feel like a house to me, you know; it's simply 'normous!"

"Ah, but that's a strict rule of ours here. No one but a Burdon may be capped in the hall; a tradition we call it. There was a—a wicked man came here hundreds of years ago and kept on his hat and they didn't see his face properly and thought he was a good man; and the Lord Burdon that was then came to speak to him, and the wicked man took out his dagger and killed Lord Burdon. What do you think of that?"

Percival seeks the proper touch. He asks: "With blug?"

"Blug—blood!" Mr. Amber exclaims testily, a trifle injured that his legends adapted to the use of children should lack conviction. "Why, bless my soul, of course there was blug—blood. Blug—dear me—blood!" and he puts so fierce an eye round where they stand, as if expecting a stain to ooze through the floor and corroborate him, that Percival draws back in haste lest he should be standing in the pool.

That makes Mr. Amber laugh and he pats Percival's golden head and concludes. "So ever since then, you see, we never let any but a Burdon wear his hat in the hall here. It would be a sign of coming disaster to the house, the tradition says."

He turns to Aunt Maggie. "My lady was very particular about it," he says. "She made a great point of observing all the traditions."

Jane Lady Burdon, though she has been dead these four years, is always "my lady" to Mr. Amber, as Roly remains to him "my lord" or "my young lord." Aunt Maggie, standing a little aside, looking at Percival, replies in her quiet voice: "I know—I remember. They are not so foolish—traditions—as some people think, Mr. Amber."

He nods his head in very weighty agreement, then turns again to Percival who, gazing round, discovers a new amazement. "But two fireplaces!" Percival cries.

"Big as a small room, too, aren't they?" says Mr. Amber, important and gratified again. "Now, look at that! There's another story for you!" He leads Percival to one vast hearth, high over which the Burdon arms are carved in oak. "See those letters around there? That's our motto. That's the Burdon motto: 'I hold!' That was the message a Burdon sent to the king's troops when Cromwell's men—another wicked man, Cromwell—were trying to get in. 'I hold!' he told his messenger to say—just that, 'I hold!' and afterwards, when Cromwell was dead and another king came back, the king changed the Burdon motto to that. 'I hold!' Fine? Eh?"

"I hold!" breathes Percival, mightily impressed.

"Why, I tell you—I tell you," cries Mr. Amber, "there's a story in every inch of this house. Better stories than all your picture books. I'll just tell Mrs. Ferris about tea and then we'll go round. I know all the stories; no one knows them like I do." And he toddles off to Mrs. Ferris, absorbed in his lore and congratulating himself upon it, and Aunt Maggie and Percival are left alone.

It is then that Percival enjoys his second right of that day.

Aunt Maggie calls him to her. "Put on your cap again a minute, Percival—just for a minute."

"Oh, but I mustn't, Aunt Maggie."

She takes the cap from his hand and holds it above his clustering curls.

He protests. "Mr. Amber said so, you know."

"What did he say, dear?"

"Only Burdons, Aunt Maggie."

She placed the cap on his head and took his face between her hands and kissed him. She looked up, and all about the hall, and high to where, around the gallery, portraits of bygone Burdons looked steadily down upon her; and her lips moved as if she spoke some message that she signalled with her eyes.

"Whoever are you talking to, Aunt Maggie?"

She put her hands on his shoulders as he stood sturdily there, the jolly red fisher cap on the back of his head, a puzzled expression in his face, and she held him a pace from her. "Say the motto, Percival, dear—the Burdon motto. Do you remember it? Say it while you have your cap on—out loud!"

"Is it a game, Aunt Maggie?"

"Say it quickly, dear—out loud!"

"I hold!" says Percival, clear and sharp.

In the gallery behind him there was a sound of movement. He turned quickly and saw a man's figure step hastily away.

"Some one was watching us, Aunt Maggie."

But Aunt Maggie was gone into her "thinking."

IV

There followed for Percival the most delightful two hours. There was first a prodigal tea in the housekeeper's room, where motherly Mrs. Ferris set him to work on scones and cream and strawberry jam, and where, as the meal progressed, he gladly gave himself over to Mr. Amber's entrancing stories of Burdon lore, while Aunt Maggie and Mrs. Ferris gossiped together.

Mrs. Ferris confirmed the arrival of servants in advance of Lord and Lady Burdon and gave some details of the visit. Her ladyship had written to say they expected to stay about a month. They came for the purpose of seeing if the fine air, for a holiday of that length, would pick up Rollo. "An ailing child," said Mrs. Ferris. "Just the opposite of that young gentleman, from all accounts," and she nodded towards the young gentleman, who beamed back at her as cheerfully as a prodigiously distended mouth would permit. "A lazy-looking lot," Mrs. Ferris thought the servants were, and ought to have come earlier, too, for there was work to be done getting the house ready, Miss Oxford might take her word for it—all the furniture and the pictures in dusting sheets—made her quite creepylike to look into the rooms sometimes. Not right, she thought it, to neglect the Manor like these were doing. She knew her place, mind you, but she meant to have a word with her ladyship before her ladyship went off again.

But the rooms had no creeps for Percival when at last the tea was done, the jam wiped off, and the promised tour of inspection started. He put a sticky hand confidingly into Mr. Amber's palm and breathed "'Normous! Simply 'normous to me, you know," as each apartment was discovered to him; and stood absorbed, the most gratifying of listeners, while Mr. Amber, comfortably astride his hobby, poured forth the stories and the legends that had gone into his cherished "Lives" and that he had by heart and could tell with an air which called up the actors out of their frames and out of the very walls to play their parts before the child. Yet once or twice he stopped in the midst of a recital and stood frowning as though something puzzled him, and once for so long that Percival asked: "Are you thinking of something else, Mr. Amber?"

"Eh?" said Mr. Amber. "Thinking? I'm afraid I was. Let me see, where was I?" But he turned away, leaving the story unfinished; and as they walked from the room Percival said politely: "I don't mind if you were, you know. I only asked. Aunt Maggie does it and I just run away and play."

Mr. Amber pressed his old fingers closer about the young hand they held. "Don't run away when I do it," he said. "Just wake me up. It keeps coming over me that I've done all this before—held a little boy's hand and told him all this just like I hold yours and tell you. Well, that's a very funny feeling, you know."

"'Strordinary!" Percival agreed in his interested way; and Mr. Amber was caused to laugh and to forget the stirring in his mind of recollections buried there twenty years down. Twenty years is deep water. It was to be more disturbed, causing much frowning, much "funny feeling," before ever it should clear and show the old librarian, looking into the pool of his own mind over Percival's shoulder, Percival's reflection cast up from the depths.

The tour finished in the library. "Now this is the library!" announced Mr. Amber at the threshold, much as St. Peter, coming with a new spirit to the last gate, might say: "Now this is Paradise."

"Now this is the library. This is my room. Now, we'll just wipe our feet once again—sideways, too—that's right. And I think our fingers are still a little sticky, eh? that's better—there!"

"'Normous!" breathed Percival. "Simply 'normous, to me, you know."

No dust sheets here, everything mellow with the deep sheen of age carefully attended. Tier upon tier of books, every hue of binding—dark red to brown, brown to deep blue, deep blue to white—and all, however worn, however aged, exquisitely responsive to Mr. Amber's soft chamois leather.

Mr. Amber waved a proud hand at them. "I expect you'll live a long time before you see another collection like this, Master Percival. And I know every one of them—every single one just like you know your toys. In the pitch dark—in the pitch dark, mind you—I could put my hand on any one I wanted without touching another. What do you think of that, eh?"

Percival has no better thought for it than the old one.

"'Normous!" he declares. "Simply 'normous to me, you know, Mr. Amber!"

"And the care I take of them!" Mr. Amber continues, as pleased with his audience as if Percival were the librarians of the House of Lords, the Bodleian and the British Museum rolled into one. "You wouldn't find enough dust on those books, anywhere, to cover the head of a pin!" He points to the highest and furthest shelves: "You'd think there might be dust right up there, wouldn't you? Well, you just choose one of those books—any one, anywhere you like."

"To keep for my own?"

"Keep! Bless my soul, no! Keep! Dear me! dear me! No, just point to a book."

"That one!" says Percival, stretching an arm. "That one in the corner!"

Mr. Amber accepts the challenge with a triumphant rubbing together of his hands. "That brown one, eh? Very well. That's a rare volume—Black Letter—Latimer's 'Fruitfull Sermons'—London, 1584. Now, you see." He trots excitedly to a high, wheeled ladder, runs it beneath the "Fruitfull Sermons," climbs up shakily, fetches down the volume and presents it for Percival's inspection: "There! Run your finger over the top of it; that's where dust collects. Ah, not that finger; got a cleaner one? That'll do. Now!"

It is getting dusk in the library, so Mr. Amber clutches the small finger that has rubbed over the "Fruitfull Sermons," and they go to a deep window where young head and old peer anxiously at the pink skin.

"Not a speck!" Mr. Amber cries triumphantly. "Not a speck of dust! What did I tell you?"

And Percival, holding the finger carefully apart from its fellows: "'Strordinary! Simply 'strordinary to me, you know!"

Mr. Amber climbs laboriously up the steps again, and seats himself at the top, and starts dusting all around the "Fruitfull Sermons," and completely forgets Percival, who wanders about for a little and then, hearing a sound, goes to the door.

V

Here was the white-faced youth, our Egbert Hunt, who had grimaced at him from the box of the wagonette. The white-faced youth stood on the further side of the passage, paused beneath a window by whose light he seemed to be examining a small phial held in his hand.

Percival ran forward: "Hallo! Are you a clown, please?"

The white-faced youth bit a pale lip and stared resentfully: "Do you live here?"

"No, I don't," Percival told him. "I've been having tea with Mrs. Ferris."

The white-faced youth developed the sudden heat characteristic of Egbert Hunt in the Miller's Field days. "Well, don't you call me no names, then," said Egbert Hunt fiercely.

"I'm not," Percival protested. "You made a face at me when you were driving in the road, and I thought you were a clown, you see."

Egbert Hunt breathed hotly through his nose. "Saucing me, ain't you?" he demanded.

Percival had heard the expression in the village. "Oh, no," he said in his earnest way. "I thought you had a funny face, that was all."

His engaging tone and air mollified the sour Egbert. "I've got a sick yedache," said Egbert. "That's what I've got—crool!"

Percival looked sorry and sought to give comfort with a phrase of Aunt Maggie. "It will soon go," he said soothingly.

"Not mine," Egbert declared. "Not my sort won't. I'm a living martyr to 'em. Fac'." He nodded with impressive gloom and took three tabloids from the phial he held in his hand. "Vegules," he explained; and swallowed them with a very loud gulping sound.

"What are you, please?" Percival inquired, vastly interested.

"Slave," said Egbert briefly.

"But you're not black," argued Percival, recalling the picture of a chained negro on a missionary almanac in Honor's kitchen.

"Thenk Gord, no!" said Egbert piously. "White slaves are worse," he added.

"And were those slaves in the carriage with you?"

"Tyrangs," said Egbert Hunt. "Tyrangs and sickopants of tyrangs."

Percival started a question; then, as a sound came: "That's my Aunt Maggie calling me. Good-by! I hope your poor head will soon be better."

Egbert smiled the wan smile of one not to be deluded into hope: "You've been kind to me," he said. "I like you. You ain't like all the rest. What's your name?"

"Percival. I really must go now, if you please. My Aunt Maggie—"

He started to run in the direction of Aunt Maggie's voice; but Egbert recalled him with a very mysterious and compelling "H'st!" and wag of the head.

"Was that your Aunt Maggie in the hall with you just now?" Egbert inquired.

A sudden recollection came to Percival. "You mean before tea? Was that you?"

"What she make you put your cap on for, and say 'I hold'? That was a funny bit, that was."

"Why, I don't know," said Percival. "Was that you up on the bridge?"

Egbert did not answer the question. "You ask her," he said, "an' tell me. Odd bit, that was."

"Yes, I will," Percival agreed. "I say, I must go. What's your name, if you please?"

"Mr. Unt. Run along; you're a nice little chap; I like you."

"I like you, too," said Percival, very interested in this strange character. "I'm sorry I thought you were a clown. Good-by, Mr. Unt. I say, there is my Aunt Maggie! Isn't this a 'normous house?" and he scampered brightly to the sound of Aunt Maggie's voice.

"Abode of tyrangs," said Mr. Hunt, moving swiftly in the opposite direction. "Boil um!"

CHAPTER II

FOLLOWS A FROG AND FINDS A TADPOLE

I

The acquaintance with slave Egbert was very shortly renewed. The afternoon of the Friday that was to see the arrival of the Burdons at the Old Manor brought also a threshing-engine up the village street—a snorting and enormous thing that fetched Percival rushing to the gate and drew him after it and kept him in charmed attendance until "Post Offic" was half a mile behind. Here the engine stopped, and the men who accompanied it setting themselves to a deliberate meal, Percival turned himself into a horse that had escaped from its stable and was recaptured and began to trot himself home.

He was in the lane that strikes out of the highroad towards Burdon Old Manor when his quick eye caught sight of a frog in the grass-grown hedge-side and "Whoa!" cried Percival and changed from escaped horse to ardent frog-hunter. The sturdiest frog, it proved to be, a big, solid fellow and wonderfully nimble at great jumps when Percival was found to be in pursuit. He pressed it hotly; it bounded amain. He laughed and followed—it was here—it was there—it was lost—it was found—it was gone again. He grew stubborn and vexed in the chase. A frown stood on his moist brow. He began to breathe hotly. The frog perceived the change. It lost its wits. It dashed from cover, made with wild bounds across the road, was closely followed, and lived to tell the frightful tale by intervention of a shout before it, a stumble behind it, and the barest pulling up of the Manor wagonette within a yard of fallen Percival.

Lord Burdon jumped out and lifted Percival in his arms before the frog-hunter was well aware of what had happened. "Not hurt, eh? That's all right! You young rascal, you—you might have been killed. Haven't you got ears? What are those great flappers for, eh?" and Lord Burdon tweaked a flapper and laughed jovially. "What were you doing, eh?"

"I was chasing a frog," said Percival, rubbing his ear and using his elevation on Lord Burdon's arms to have a stare at the little boy and the pretty lady in the wagonette.

"A frog! Why here's a frog for you. Come and look at my frog in the cart here."

Lord Burdon carried him to the body of the wagonette. "Here's my frog! tadpole, rather. Rollo, look here. You're only a little tadpole, aren't you? Look what this fine air is going to do for you. Look at this great lump of a fellow. That's what you've got to be like!"

The little tadpole smiled shyly. Tadpole was an excusable description. Rollo Letham at nearly ten might have passed for younger than Percival at rising eight. He was very thin, pale, fragile; his head looked too big for his delicate frame; his eyes were big and shy, his mouth nervous.

"A shame!" said Lady Burdon, smiling. "You're not a tadpole, are you, Rollo? But this is a splendid young man!" And she stretched a kind hand—nicely gloved—across the cart to Percival.

Lord Burdon raised him to meet it. Bare knees, well-streaked with mud and blood, came into view.

"Oh, your poor little knees!" Lady Burdon cried.

Percival caught Rollo's eye fixed in some horror on the wounds. "I cut them every day!" he said bigly, and shot a proud glance at the tadpole.

"Well, they're terrible. They must be washed. Bring him in, Maurice. We'll wash him, as we've nearly killed him, at the house."

"Yes, do! Yes, please do!" Rollo whispered, and his mother patted his hand, pleased at the animation of the thin little face.

Lord Burdon hesitated: "Take him to the Manor? Why, that may be miles from his home, you know."

"I suppose we can send him back in the trap, can't we?" Lady Burdon said, a trifle disagreeably. "You're a regular old woman, Maurice. Lift him in next to Rollo. You can see how Rollo takes to him, I should have thought."

"Didn't want to be had up for kidnapping, you know," Lord Burdon responded cheerfully. "Would be a bad start in the local opinion—eh?" And he laughed with the appeal and the apology with which he always met his wife's waves of impatience. "Shove up, Rollo! In you get, frog-hunter! Heavens! What a lump. All right. Drive on!"

"Gee up!" cried Percival, highly entertained, and chatted frankly with Lady Burdon as the wagonette bowled along. To her questions he was nearly eight, he told her; he would have another birthday in a short time; Honor gave him a sword at his last birthday and his Aunt Maggie gave him a trumpet. "You may blow my trumpet, if you like," turning to Rollo. "Honor says it is poison to blow it because I've broken the little white thing what you blow through. But I blow it all right."

Rollo flushed and smiled and put a thin little hand from beneath the rug and took Percival's muddy fist and held it for the remainder of the journey. Boy friends who did not laugh at him were new to him.

"Miss Oxford's little boy," Percival explained to further questions. "I live at the post-office, and we've got a drawer full of stamps with funny little holes what you tear off."

Lady Burdon turned to her husband: "Ah, I know now. You remember? You remember the vicar telling us about Miss Oxford when we first came down here? Well, she's to be congratulated on her nephew. I'm glad. He'll be the jolliest little companion for Rollo."

Lord Burdon remembered. "Yes—this will be her sister's child. Orphan, poor little beggar."

And Lady Burdon: "We'll be able to have him up with Rollo as much as we like, I've no doubt. Look how happy they are together," and she smiled at them, chatting eagerly.

Percival was twisting and bending the better to see the occupants of the box-seat. A form that seemed familiar sat beside the driver. "Why, that's Mr. Unt!" Percival cried brightly, and as the familiar form turned at the sound of its name, "How's your poor headache, Mr. Unt?" he asked. "Much better now, isn't it?"

Mr. Unt's pallid face became slightly tinged with embarrassment. "The young gentleman spoke to me at the Manor Wednesday, me lady," he apologised. "Had come up to take tea with Mr. Hamber." He profited by the touch of his hat with which he spoke to draw his hand across his forehead; a sick yedache clearly was still torturing there.

"His headaches are terrible," Percival explained. "I thought he was a clown, you know. I saw him driving in this carriage with tyrangs."

Egbert's back shivered. "Parding, me lady," said he, turning again.

Lady Burdon laughed. "Hunt," she told Percival. "Not Unt. He speaks badly."

"You know, his headaches—" Percival began; and she added more severely: "He is a servant."

"He's my servant," Rollo said. "Hunt looks after me when I go out. I hate nurses, so I have him. He'll be yours too, if you'll come and play with me. Both of ours. May he, mother?"

"You can tell Miss Oxford that some one will always be there to keep an eye on you if she will let you come and play," Lady Burdon replied to Percival.

"So now he is yours and mine," cried Rollo, squeezing the hand he held.

"Thank you very much," Percival said. "Of course, if his headache is very bad we won't have him, because he will like to lie down."

He spoke clearly; and a tiny little tremble of Egbert's back seemed to advertise again the gratitude that sympathy aroused in him.

"Oh, that's nothing," Rollo declared. "He pretends."

The poor back drooped. "Tyrangs," Egbert murmured and furtively edged a vegule to his mouth.

II

In the dusk of that evening Percival went bounding home, immensely pleased with his new friends and with the new delights in life they had discovered for him. He had nice clean knees and a bandage on each—a matter that caused him considerable pride. He had gladly promised to come to see Rollo again on the morrow, and he would have stayed much longer into the evening had not Lord Burdon (as Lady Burdon said) "begun to fidget" and to persist that Miss Oxford must be getting nervous at this long absence.

"His aunt will naturally be glad when she knows where he has been," Lady Burdon had exclaimed.

Lord Burdon gave the smile that she knew came before one of his annoying rejoinders. "That won't make her wild with joy while she doesn't know where he is, old girl."

She was irritable. The vexation of having to leave London, which she enjoyed, for Burdon which she felt she would hate, was settling upon her. She looked at him resentfully. "That is funny, I suppose?" she inquired. "You are always very funny, aren't you?" and she gave orders for Hunt to take Percival home.

Down the road Percival chattered brightly to Egbert, holding his hand. "I jump like this," he explained, capering along, "because I pretend I'm a horse. Then if you want me to walk quietly you only have to say 'whoa!' you see."

"Whoa!" said Egbert very promptly.

Percival's legs itched to jump out the animation that events had bottled into him. "Did you say 'gee up'?" he presently inquired.

"No," said Egbert.

"Oh," said Percival, and with a little sigh repeated "oh!"

Egbert felt the appeal. "Fac' of it is, that jumping jerks me up."

"Got another sick headache, have you?"

"Crool," said the living martyr to 'em.

Percival took another phrase of Aunt Maggie: "You must be thor'ly out of sorts, I think."

"Got one foot in the grave, that's what I've got," Egbert agreed. "Fac'."

Percival peered down at Egbert's legs. "Which one, please?" he inquired.

"Figger o' speech," Egbert told him, and explained: "Way of saying things." He added: "Go off in the night one of these days, I shall;" and commented with gloomy satisfaction: "Then they'll be sorry."

Percival asked: "Who will?" He visioned Egbert running by night with one foot embedded in a tombstone, and he was considerably attracted by the picture. "Who will?" he repeated.

"Tyrangs!" said Egbert. "Too late to be sorry then. Fac'."

"Well, I should be dreffly sorry," Percival assured him.

"Believe you," said Egbert, "and many thanks for the same. First that's ever said a kine word to me, you are; and I'll be grateful—if I'm spared."

He looked at his watch and then down the lane. "Think you could get home safe from here? Fac' is I'm behind with my vegules and left them in my other coat."

"Oh, yes," Percival agreed. "This is just by the corner, you know."

"Well, then," said Egbert, halting, "you see, if I don't take 'em fair, can't expec' them to treat me fair, can I?"

Percival assented: "Oh, no."

"Sure you'll be all right?"

"Oh, yes. I'll be a horse, you see. Just say 'gee up!' will you?"

"Gee up!" said Egbert.

"Stead-ey!" cried Percival, prancing. "Stead-ey! Goodnight!" and bounded off.

"Nice little f'ler," commented Egbert; and hurried back to the vegules.

Where the lane turned to the village, horse Percival was made, as he declared, to shy dreff'ly. He galloped almost into the arms of two figures that stepped suddenly out of the dusk. "Oh, Percival!" Aunt Maggie cried and kissed him. "Oh, Percival, where have you been?"

"Say 'whoa!" cried Percival. "Say 'whoa!' Aunt Maggie. I'm a horse—a white one, you know."

Two heavy hands pressed the white horse's shoulders, stilling its plunges. "You're a bad little boy, that's what you are," Honor exclaimed, "running off and frightening your Auntie, and not caring nor minding. Don't Care comes before a fall, as I've told you many times and—"

"Pride comes before a fall," corrected Percival. "You've got it wrong again, Honor," and Honor's flow was checked with the suddenness that had become the established termination of attempts to reprove Percival since he had learnt the right phrasing of her store of confused maxims.

She took his hand while she pondered doubtfully upon the correction, and with Aunt Maggie holding the other, he skipped along, bubbling over with his adventures. "I've got bandages on both my legs, Aunt Maggie—oh, and Hunt has got one of his legs in the grave, just fancy that! I've been having tea with Rollo; and Lady Burdon put on these bandages and she wants me to go and play with Rollo every day. Do let me, Aunt Maggie. I say, you are squeezing my hand most dreffly, you know."

Aunt Maggie relaxed the sudden contraction of her fingers. "Lady Burdon—yes?—tell from the very beginning, Percival dear."

"Well, she said 'Promise to tell your Aunt Maggie I will come and ask her to let you be Rollo's little friend and'—Aunt Maggie! You're hurting!"

She recollected herself again and patted the small fingers. "Tell from the very beginning, dear. How did you meet them?"

"Well, you understand, I was catching a frog—"

"Post Offic" was reached, supper was swallowed, his merry head beginning to droop and nod, while still he excitedly recounted all his adventures. He was almost asleep when Aunt Maggie undressed him and put him to bed.

She sat a long time beside him, watching him while he slept.

CHAPTER III

LADY BURDON COMES TO "POST OFFIC"

I

In the morning Lady Burdon came with Rollo to make her request that Percival might spend much of his time at the Old Manor as Rollo's playmate. In these seven years since the amazement at Miller's Field, this was but her third visit to the estate, her first for the purpose of staying any length of time, and the first that had seen Rollo with her. Two days had been spent here when Jane Lady Burdon had been brought to rest in Burdon churchyard; three when Mr. Maxwell, the agent, had been troublesome and importunate in the matter of expensive alterations on the property. Lady Burdon had come down then "to have an understanding with him;" as she expressed it—"to see for herself." The result had been as unfortunate for Mr. Maxwell (to whom she had shown some temper) as it had been augmentative of the dislike she had always felt for the property and its greedy responsibilities. The result had been to filter over the countryside from Mr. Maxwell that she was the controlling partner in the new representatives of the house; that hers was the refusal to take up the urgently needed irrigation scheme; hers the scandal (as it became) of neglect to carry out improvements in the cottages over at Abbess Roding; hers the crime (as it was held) of the selling-up over at Shepwall that entailed eviction of tenants old on the land as the house of Burdon itself.

On the other hand the result had been to return Lady Burdon to the Mount Street life with at least a temporary stop put to the Maxwell whinings and at least a lighter drain from the Mount Street expenses.

Miss Oxford had not seen her on either of these visits. Miss Oxford had only smiled in an odd way when she heard of the behaviour that had set the countryside clacking. The better Lady Burdon flourished, the more Lady Burdon exercised the prerogatives of her usurped position, the riper she ripened for the blow, when there should be returned to her the son whose mother she had murdered; that was the entertainment Miss Oxford nursed through these years, living so gently and so quietly, "thinking" so much, poor dear.

"Strange-like?" "Silly-like?" Or dreadfully sane? For Miss Oxford's own part, she knew only one thing of her mental condition. At very rare intervals there seized her a state that was related to and that recalled the tremendous pressure in her brain when she had knelt, consumed with hate and desire for vengeance, by Audrey's death-bed. It took the form of a sudden violent fluttering in her brain, as though a live, winged thing were beating there, beating to be free. The pressure that came by Audrey's death-bed had ended in a snap—in something giving that left her extraordinarily, tinglingly calm, possessed by the plan and certainty of revenge to be taken by Audrey's son—one day. The fluttering, the winglike beating ended of its own volition, and outside any command she could put upon it—sweeping up all her senses in its beating, only leaving to her the terror that it would end—in what? Sometimes it came in just the tiniest flutter, without cause and gone as soon as come, just arresting her and frightening her like a swift shoot of pain in a nerve. Sometimes in the briefest flutter but with cause; such a case had been when Percival told her of his meeting with the Burdons and she had caused him to exclaim by clutching his hand. Once of much longer duration and of new effect, and with revelation to her of the end it threatened. That was when, a few days ago, she had stood alone with Percival in the great hall of Burdon Old Manor. It was the fluttering that had bade her make him put on his cap and cry 'I hold!' and she had been informed that if it did not stop—if it did not stop!—if it did not stop! she would scream out her secret—run through the house and cry to all that Lady Burdon was—

It had stopped. The beating wings ceased. She was returned to her quiet, gentle waiting.

II

It always took the same form—the presentation of a picture.

"They're coming! They're coming!" cried Percival, bursting into the parlour with tossing arms, aflame with excitement, hopping on lively toes, to announce Lady Burdon and Rollo. "They're coming, Aunt Maggie!" and he was away to greet them at the gate.

Aunt Maggie was at the table where post-office business was conducted. The open door gave directly on to the garden path; and she heard voices and then a step on the threshold and bent over the papers before her; and then a pleasant tone that said "Good morning, I am Lady Burdon," and immediately the beating wings, wild, savage, whirling, and she transported from where she sat to watch herself in the picture that the fluttering always brought.

Immense beating of the wings, the sound drumming in her ears; seven years rolled up as a stage-curtain discloses a scene, and she saw the room in the Holloway road, herself kneeling there and Audrey's voice: "... and then said 'I am Lady Burdon' ... O Maggie! O Maggie! ... and I said 'Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?' ... Maggie! Maggie!" The beating wings drove up to a pitch they had never before reached. Through their tumult—buffeted, as it were, by their fury—and from the scene in which she saw herself, she looked up and saw Lady Burdon smiling there, and heard Lady Burdon's voice: "Good morning, I am Lady Burdon." Again, as in the great hall with Rollo, if it did not stop!—if it did not stop!—if it did not stop! she must cry out: "You are not! You said that to Audrey and killed her! Now—"

And again, and this time when the terrible fluttering had almost beaten itself free and she had formed her lips to release it, it suddenly stopped. As at the bedside, seven years before, she fell from paroxysm of passion to unnatural calm, so now she was returned to her normal, quiet self, content to wait, and she said quite quietly: "Percival told me to expect you."

Lady Burdon advanced pleasantly. "Ah, and I hope he also remembered to tell you of my apologies. I am afraid we kept him with us much too long last night."

She looked around the room with the air of one willing to chat and to be entertained, and Miss Oxford, murmuring there was no occasion for apology, advanced a chair with: "Please sit down, if you will. This is very humble, I am afraid. It is only the post-office, you know; and only a toy post-office at that."

She was quite herself again. Through this interview, and always thereafter when she met Lady Burdon or thought of her, she was invested with the calmness that had come to her by the death-bed. She knew quite certainly that she had only to wait. She was not at all anxious. She knew she could wait. She only feared—now for the first time, and increasingly as the attacks became more frequent—that an onset of that dreadful fluttering might descend upon her and might not go before it had driven her to wreck the plan for which she waited—Percival, not she, to avenge his mother.

The fear caused in her a noticeable nervousness of manner. Lady Burdon attributed it to natural embarrassment at this gracious visit, and that made her more gracious yet. Miller's Field would have perceived in Lady Burdon, as she sat talking pleasantly, a considerable change from the Mrs. Letham it had known. She was very becomingly dressed. She had grown a trifle rounder in the figure and fuller in the face since Miller's Field gave her good-by, and that advantaged her. Her olive complexion was warmer in shade, healthier in tinting than it had been. The walk from the Manor had touched her freshly, and she had been pleased by the respectful greetings of the villagers. Rollo, completely in love with Percival, was brighter than she had ever known him. She had hated the idea of burying herself down here for a month; but she was beginning to entertain an agreeable view of taking up her neglected position and dignity in this pleasant countryside. She was very happy as she faced Miss Oxford: her happiness and all that contributed to it made her very comely to the eye; and she was aware of that.

She spoke enthusiastically of Percival. "Such a splendid young man. Such charming manners." She spoke most graciously of knowing all about Miss Oxford and of how plucky of her it was to take up the post-office. She said smilingly that Miss Oxford was not to take advantage of the post-office by keeping herself to herself as the saying was; and when Miss Oxford replied; "You are kind; we have no society here, of course; with the one or two families the post-office makes no difference; we are all old friends; with you, it is different;" she said very winningly: "Not kind, in any case—selfish. It is Percival I am after. We have taken so much to him. He and my Rollo have struck up the greatest friendship, and that is such a pleasure to me. Rollo as a rule is so shy and reserved with children. He has no child friends. It will do him a world of good if Percival may play with him. Percival will be the making of him."

She smiled in confident and happy belief of her words, and Miss Oxford smiled, too. It was not for Lady Burdon to know—yet—that Percival was being brought up to be not Rollo's making but his undoing.

But Miss Oxford only said that the friendship would be capital for Percival also, since Lady Burdon permitted it. "There are no boys here in Little Letham that he can make close companions," she said. "We seem short of children—except among the villagers. I think Mrs. Espart's little girl at Upabbot over the Ridge is the nearest."

Lady Burdon nodded. "Mrs. Espart—yes, I am to go over there. She left cards, thinking we had arrived. Abbey Royal, she lives at, doesn't she?"

"Abbey Royal, yes. One of our show places, you know. What Percival would call 'normous," and Miss Oxford related the "'normous; simply 'normous to me, you know," of Percival's visit to the Manor. "We came to 'enormous' when I was reading to him shortly afterwards," she said, "and he exclaimed: 'I know! 'Normous, like Mr. Amber's house!' Mr. Amber showed him round."

"He is the sweetest little fellow," Lady Burdon laughed. "And reading to him—I was going to ask you about that—about lessons, I mean. Does he do lessons? Rollo's education has been terribly neglected, I am afraid. I thought it would be so nice if he could join his new friend in them while he is here."

"Percival goes every morning to Miss Purdie—you would have passed her cottage—next to the Church."

"Capital," Lady Burdon said. "I will arrange for Rollo."

"She will be delighted. Having Percival has already lost her a chance of another pupil. Mrs. Espart was going to send her little girl over daily, but didn't like the idea of the post-office little boy."

"Ridiculous!" Lady Burdon cried. "I will tell her so." She turned at the sound of much scrambling and laughter in the doorway. "Ridiculous! Rollo, you are going to do lessons with Percival. Now won't that be jolly, darling?"

But it was Percival who was first in and came bounding to them with: "Aunt Maggie! Aunt Maggie! Rollo has got a pony of his own in London and rides it! Well, what do you think of that?"

Aunt Maggie thought it splendid and was introduced to Rollo, and "suddenly seemed to lose her tongue," as Lady Burdon told Lord Burdon at lunch. "Hugged Percival as though she hadn't seen him for a year and scarcely looked at Rollo. Jealous, I believe, at the difference between their stations. Funny, that kind of jealousy, don't you think?"

But it was not jealousy that had silenced Aunt Maggie and caused her to clutch Percival to her breast. At sight of him with Rollo, and of Lady Burdon smiling at him, that fluttering had run up in her brain, and she had clasped Percival to restrain herself while it lasted. It had gone while she held him; but she had almost cried: "Do you dare smile at him? He is Audrey's son! Audrey's son!"

Percival wriggled from her embrace and she heard Lady Burdon say to Rollo: "Well, why not a pony here?" and heard her laugh delightedly at the excited roar the suggestion shot out of Percival.

"I wonder if there is anywhere here we could get a pony for Rollo?" she heard Lady Burdon say, and heard the question repeated, and made a great effort to come out of the shaken state in which the fluttering had left her.

"Over at Market Roding you might get a pony," she said dully. "There is a Mr. Hannaford there. He has ponies. He supplies ponies to circuses, I have heard."

Lady Burdon kissed Percival good-by at the gate. "Lord Burdon shall take you over with Rollo to this Mr. Hannaford," she told him. "That Miss Purdie's cottage? We are going to look in on our way. Run back to your Aunt Maggie. She is tired, I think."

"Well, she's thinking, you know," said Percival.

Lady Burdon laughed. "Thinking, is she, you funny little man? Of what?"

And Percival, in his earnest way: "Well, I don't know. It 'plexes me, you know."

CHAPTER IV

LITTLE 'ORSES AND LITTLE STU-PIDS

I

The pony was obtained from Mr. Hannaford and lessons were arranged with Miss Purdie.

It was the happiest party that occupied the wagonette on that drive to and from Mr. Hannaford's farm at Market Roding. Lord Burdon, Rollo, Percival—each declared it that evening to have been the very jolliest time that ever was.

"Well, we have had a jolly day, haven't we, old man?" Lord Burdon said to Rollo when he kissed him good night. Lord Burdon had worn a shabby old suit and had told the boys stories till, as he assured them, his tongue ached; and had walked with them about Mr. Hannaford's farm, with Percival prancing on one side and Rollo quietly beaming on the other. In London, in the life that Lady Burdon directed at Mount Street, such careless, childish joys were impossible. Not since the day he had spent with Rollo at the Zoölogical Gardens, when Lady Burdon was at Ascot, had he so completely enjoyed himself—and not a doubt but that the bursting excitement of young Percival was responsible for the far greater joviality of this day at Mr. Hannaford's.

"Did I tell you about when they came to the ditch while we were walking over the farm?" Lord Burdon asked Lady Burdon. "That little beggar Percival—"

Lady Burdon looked at him over the book she was reading. "Not a sixth time, please, Maurice," she said. "I'm really rather tired of hearing it," and Lord Burdon assumed his foolishly distressed look and for the remainder of the evening sat smiling over the jolly day in silence.

The jolliest day for Rollo! He had been the quiet one of the party because to be retiring was his nature, but when Percival shouted and when Percival jumped, Rollo's heart was in the shout and Rollo's spirit bounded with the jump. He had never believed there could be such a friend for him or so much new fun in life. Hitherto his chief companion had been his mother, his constant mood a dreamy and shrinking habit of mind. Vigorous Percival introduced him to the novelty of "games," showed him what mirth was, and what vigorous young limbs could do. The jolliest day! He fell asleep that night thinking of Percival; in his dreams with Percival raced and shouted; awakened in the morning with Percival for his first thought.

And of course it was the jolliest day for Percival. "I never had such fun, you know," Percival declared to Aunt Maggie. "I rode the pony all alone and Mr. Hannaford said I was a Pocket Marvel; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

Mr. Hannaford, indeed, was mightily pleased with Percival. Mr. Hannaford was an immensely stout man with a tremendously deep voice and with very twinkling little eyes set in a superbly red face. He wore brown leather gaiters and very tight cord-breeches and a very loose tail-coat of tweed, cut very square. From his habit of never removing his bowler hat in the house even at meals, the common belief was that he slept in it, and he punctuated his sentences when he spoke, and marked his alternate strides when he walked, by tremendously loud cracks of a bamboo cane against a gaitered leg. It was his frequent habit when he desired emphasis to bless what he termed his "eighteen stun proper," and he caused Rollo to giggle by his trick of calling a horse "a norse."

Mr. Hannaford received his visitors by raising his hat as far from his head as any one had ever seen it, by giving three terrific cracks of his cane against his leg, and by extending to Rollo and Percival in turn a hand of the size of a small shoulder of mutton.

"Well, you've come to the right place for a little 'orse, me lord, bless my eighteen stun proper if you haven't," Mr. Hannaford declared. "And 'll want a proper little 'orse for your lordship's son, moreover," continued Mr. Hannaford, after another tremendous leg-and-cane crack and looking admiringly at Percival.

Percival was quick with the correction. "Oh, I'm not his son. I'm only a little boy, you know. I can ride, though, because sometimes I pretend I'm a horse all day long; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

Mr. Hannaford was hugely delighted, and having begged his lordship's pardon for the mistake, gave it as his deliberate opinion that a young gentleman who could pretend he was a norse all day long was a Pocket Marvel.

The Pocket Marvel performed a prance or two in order to show that this estimate of him was well merited, and they proceeded to the stables, Mr. Hannaford, as they walked, making clear, to the tune of astonishing leg-and-cane cracks, the reasons why the right place for a little 'orse had been selected by his lordship.

"There's money in little 'orses," said Mr. Hannaford. (Crack!) "And I'm one of the few that know it." (Crack!) He broke off, stared towards the house, face changing from its superb red to astonishing purple, and to a distant figure roared "Garge!" in a voice like a clap of thunder. "Garge! Fetch that pig out of the flower beds! You want my stick about your back, Garge; bless my eighteen stun proper if you don't."

"Pardon, me lord," begged Mr. Hannaford, bringing his stick back to his leg from where it had flourished at Garge, and continuing: "There's more demand for little 'orses than anybody that hasn't given brain to it would believe, me lord. Gentlefolks' little girls want little 'orses and gentlefolks' little boys want little 'orses; gentlefolks' little carts want little 'orses, young gentlemen want little polo 'orses, and circuses want little trick 'orses. Where are they going to get 'em?" inquired Mr. Hannaford, and answered his question with: "They're coming to me." (Crack!)

"Capital!" declared Lord Burdon, who was finding Mr. Hannaford a man nearer to his liking than any he had met within the radius of Mount Street.

"Capital's the word," agreed Mr. Hannaford. "Bless my eighteen stun proper if it isn't!" (Crack!) "It will take time, mind you, me lord. I'm doing it in stages. Stage One: circus little 'orses. I rackon I'm level with Stage One now. Started with circus little 'orses because I was in the circus line once and my brother Martin—Stingo they call him, me lord—is in it now. Proper connaction with circus little 'orses I've worked up. They come to me when they want a circus little 'orse, bless my eighteen stun proper if they don't." (Crack!) "Stage Two: little gentlefolks' little 'orses—just starting that now, me lord. Stage Three: gentlefolks' little carts' little 'orses. Stage Four: young gentlemen's little polo 'orses. What I want," declared Mr. Hannaford with a culminating crack of tremendous proportions, "is to make people when they see a little 'orse think of Hannaford. Hannaford—little 'orse; little 'orse—Hannaford. Two words one meaning, one meaning two words; that's my lay and I'll do it, bless my eighteen stun proper if I won't!" (Crack!)

"'Pon my soul it's a big scheme," said Lord Burdon, highly entertained and beginning to realise that this was no common man.

"Correct!" Mr. Hannaford assured him, and confided with a terrible crack: "I call it a whopper. One of these days Stingo will settle down and join me and there'll be no more holding us than you can hold a little 'orse with your finger and thumb."

"Settle down?" Lord Burdon questioned, greatly interested. "Younger than you, eh?"

"Three and a half minutes," returned Mr. Hannaford, and added, "Twins," in reply to Lord Burdon's exclamation of surprise. "Not much in point of time, but very different in point of nature. Wants settling down; then he'll be all right. You'll see Stingo in a minute, me lord; he's here," and Mr. Hannaford pointed to the line of sheds they had reached. "On a visit," he explained; and added with a heavy sigh: "Here to-day and gone to-morrow; that's Stingo."

He unlatched a door. "This way, me lord. Only wooden stables at present; brick, and brick floors, that's to come. This way, my young lordship. This way, little master; don't you be a little 'orse now, else maybe we shall make a mistake and tie you up in a stall."

The interior was dim. Restless movements announced the presence of several little 'orses, and presently was to be seen a line of plump little quarters, mainly piebald, one or two more sedately coloured.

"Gentleman to buy a little 'orse," announced Mr. Hannaford; and immediately a face that was the precise replica of his own appeared from over the side of a partition.

"Well he's come to the proper place for a little 'orse," announced the face in a very husky whisper and disappeared again.

"Why, just my very words!" declared Mr. Hannaford with high delight. "Just my very words, bless my eighteen stun proper if it wasn't! Step out, Stingo. Lord Burdon, over from Burdon, with his young lordship and a—" Mr. Hannaford stopped and stared around him. "Why, wherever's that young Pocket Marvel got to?"

"I'm here!" Percival called excitedly. "I'm stroking this dear little black one and he knows me; so I should like to know what you think of that?" He came dancing out from the stall of the little black one, his face blazing with excitement, and simultaneously the replica of Mr. Hannaford's face appeared again and a replica of Mr. Hannaford's figure advanced towards them.

"Proud!" declared the replica in a strained whisper, and raised his hat. "You're doing well," he whispered to Mr. Hannaford. "You're doing uncommon well." He extended his hand and the brothers shook hands, very solemnly on the part of the replica, with beaming delight on the part of Mr. Hannaford.

"Steady down, boy; steady down and join us," Mr. Hannaford earnestly entreated, holding Stingo's hand and gazing into his face with great fondness. But Stingo slowly shook his head, and turning to Lord Burdon again, raised his hat and after many severe throatings managed a husky repetition of "Proud!"

Mr. Hannaford heaved an astonishingly loud sigh, pulled himself together with a leg-and-cane crack that caused all the little 'orses to start, and addressed himself to business. Little master, he declared, had a proper eye for a proper little 'orse. The little black 'orse that little master had stroked might have been specially born for his lordship's purpose; picked up at Bampton fair last spring, a trifle too stout and not quite the colouring for a circus little 'orse and trained to be the first of Stage Two: little gentlefolks' little 'orses.

Concluding this recommendation, Mr. Hannaford put his head outside the stable and roared "Jim!" in a voice that might have been heard at Little Letham; Stingo put his head out and throated "Jim!" in a husky whisper that nobody heard but himself; and presently there appeared a long, thin youth wearing a brimless straw hat that was in constant movement owing to an alarming habit of twitching his scalp.

"Fix him up and run him out," commanded Mr. Hannaford, jerking a thumb at the little black 'orse; "and keep your scalp steady, me lad, else you'll do yourself a ninjury." He glared very fiercely; and Jim, touching an eyebrow which a violent twitch had rushed up to the point that should have been covered by the brimless straw hat, took down a bridle and approached the little black 'orse with the air of one who anticipates some embarrassment.

Mr. Hannaford's stables looked on to a small enclosed paddock, much cut about with hoofs and marked in the centre by a deeply trodden ring, around which, as he explained, the little 'orses were put through their circus paces.

Rollo shyly held his father's hand; Stingo revolved slowly on his own axis the better to keep a surprised eye on Percival, who pranced and bounded with excitement; and presently the little black 'orse, with tossing head and delighted heels, was produced before them.

"Now!" said Mr. Hannaford, patting the little black 'orse with one hand and extending the other to Rollo. "Up you come, my little lordship. Nothing to be afraid of. Only his fun that. Steady as a little lamb when you're on his back—perfectly safe, me lord," he assured Lord Burdon.

But Rollo hung back, nestling his hand deeper into his father's and flushing with nervous appeal into Lord Burdon's face. His riding in the Park did not accommodate the natural timidity of his nature to the adventures of a strange mount, and less so to the doubtful prospects that the spirit of the little black 'orse appeared to offer. Lord Burdon understood, and patted Rollo's hand. "Not feeling quite up to it, old man? Well, we'll ask Mr. Hannaford to send the pony over to the Manor, and try him there, eh?"

"Blest if you ain't right, me young lordship," declared Mr. Hannaford tactfully. "Never be hurried into trying a new little 'orse. That's the way. Jim shall bring him round for you, me lord, first thing in the morning. Walk him up the field, Jim, to let his lordship see how he moves."

Jim clicked his tongue, the little black 'orse bounded amain, and Percival, who had been watching with burning eyes, could control himself no longer. "Oh, let me!" Percival cried. "Just one tiny little ride! Lord Burdon, please let me! I 'treat you to let me!"

"Why, you can't ride," Lord Burdon objected playfully.

"I could ride him anywhere!" Percival implored. "He knows me. Just look how he's looking at me. Oh, please—please!" and he ended with a shout of delight, for Lord Burdon nodded to Mr. Hannaford and Mr. Hannaford swung Percival from the ground into the saddle.

"Shorten up that stirrup-iron, Jim," said Mr. Hannaford, stuffing Percival's foot into the stirrup on his side. "Catch hold this way, little master. Stick in with your knees. That's the way. Run him out, Jim."

The straw-hatted youth made a clutch at the bridle, the little black 'orse jerked up its little black head, and Percival jerked up the bridle and cried: "Let go! let go!" and kicked a stirruped foot at the straw-hatted youth and cried: "He knows me, I tell you!"

"Pocket Marvel," commented Stingo huskily, watching the struggle. "Pocket Marvel, if ever I saw one."

"Why, that's just the very words that I called him, bless my eighteen stun proper if it isn't!" cried Mr. Hannaford in huge delight; and simultaneously the straw-hatted youth, with a terrible cry and a tremendous jerk of the scalp, received a pawing hoof on his foot and relaxed his hold on the bridle.

Away went the little black 'orse and away went the Pocket Marvel bounding in the saddle like an india-rubber ball; shouting with delight; losing a stirrup; clutching at the saddle; saving himself by a miraculous twist as the little black 'orse circled at the top of the field; bumping higher and higher as the little black 'orse came gamely trotting back to them, and finally shooting headfirst into Mr. Hannaford's arms, as Stingo caught the bridle and the little black 'orse came to a stop.

Mr. Hannaford placed Percival on his legs and he stood by the little black 'orse's side, breathless, flushed, the centre of general congratulations and laughter, from the deep "Ho! Ho!" and terrible leg-and-cane cracks of Mr. Hannaford to the silent signals of appreciation indicated by the rapid oscillation of the brimless straw hat on the astonishing scalp movements of Jim.

"Well, I'm afraid I got off rather too quickly, you know," he announced.

"Not a bit of it!" Mr. Hannaford declared stoutly, rubbing that portion of his waistcoat into which Percival's head had cannoned. "You got off same as you stuck on; like a regular little Pocket Marvel, bless my eighteen stun proper if you didn't."

The Pocket Marvel went crimson with new pride and excitement. He made to turn eagerly to the little black 'orse again; and there occurred then an incident of which he thought nothing at the time, nor for many years, but which secreted itself in that strange storehouse of the brain where trivialities permanently root themselves and whence they stir, shake off the dust and emerge, when the impressions of far greater events are obliterated. As he stretched a hand to the bridle, he caught a glimpse of Rollo's face. Distress not far removed from tears was there. The boy was concealing himself behind his father. His sensitive nature caused him to feel that the laughing group, when it turned attention to him, would to his detriment compare him with this bold young junior; he shrank from that moment.

Percival turned away from the little black 'orse and ran to him. "Now it's your turn, Rollo. You see, he knew me from the beginning, and that's why he liked me to ride him. Now you try. I promise you I shall run by his side and then, you see, he'll know you're a friend of mine."

He took Rollo's hand and drew him forward. "Sure you'd like to, old chap?" Lord Burdon asked, and Rollo said; "Oh, yes," and mounted by himself, as he had been taught in London.

"There you are!" cried Percival, beaming up at him and clapping his hands with delight. "There you are! Now, then!" And he set off running alongside as he had undertaken, as the little black 'orse broke into a trot. Once in the saddle, Rollo abandoned his fears and rode easily. The little black 'orse outpaced Percival's small legs, and Percival came running back and took Lord Burdon's hand and watched with eager eyes and squirmed with delight.

"He doesn't bump like I did, you see," he said. "Look how he turns him!" and he freed his hand and clapped and shouted: "Well done, Rollo!"

"'Pon my soul, Percival, you're a devilish good little beggar," said Lord Burdon; and a similar thought was in the minds of the brothers Hannaford when, the pony purchased, they watched the wagonette drive from the farm. "I shall save up and come with my Aunt Maggie and buy one too," Percival declared, giving his hand to Mr. Hannaford over the side of the trap. "In my money-box I've got three shillings already; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

"Pocket Marvel, that little master," commented Mr. Hannaford, as the wagonette turned out of sight.

Stingo made three husky attempts at speech and at length whispered: "Thought he was the young lordship when I first saw 'em."

Mr. Hannaford beamed with delight and extended his hand. "Why, that's just what I thought!" he declared; "bless my eighteen stun proper if it wasn't. Steady down, boy, steady down and join us."

But Stingo's handshake was limp, and he shook his head slowly.

II

Then there were the lessons with Miss Purdie. Very considerably less satisfactory, these, than the tearing excitements that the pony provided, yet having plenty of fun for Percival's eager young mind, and increasing along a new path the intimacy between the two boys. Rollo was the more advanced; but his grounding! "Your grounding," as Miss Purdie would cry, "is shoc-king! Grounding is everything! Look at this sum! What is seven times twelve, sir? ... then why have you put down a six? How dare you laugh, Percival? You are worse! Rollo, it's no good! You must begin at the beginning. Grounding is everything!"

Terribly frightening, Miss Purdie, when swept by her little storms. Rather like a little bird, Miss Purdie, with her sharp little glances from behind her spectacles. "Don't put your tongue out when you write, Percival! What would you think of me, if I moved my tongue from corner to corner every time I write, like that? Don't laugh at me, sir!"

"Well, it comes out by itself," Percival expostulates, "and I don't even know that it is out, you know; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

"I don't think any thing about it," says Miss Purdie, with a stamp of her little foot. "That stu-pid question of yours! How often have I told you not to use it?"

Very like a little bird, Miss Purdie, with her sharp little glances, with her nimble little hops to and fro, and with her perky little cockings of the head on this side and the other as she encourages an answer.

"Now the grammar lesson and I hope you've both prepared it. Gender of nouns. Masculine, Govern-or. Feminine?"

"Govern-ess," venture the boys, a trifle apprehensively.

"Good boys! Masculine, Sorcer-er. Feminine?"

"Sorcer-ess," says the chorus, gathering courage.

"Masculine, Cater-er. Feminine?"

"Cater-ess," bawls the chorus, thoroughly enjoying itself.

"Not so loud! Masculine, Murder-er. Feminine?"

"Murder-ess," howls the chorus, recklessly delighted.

"Good boys! Now be careful! Prosecutor? Take time over it. Masculine, Prosecut-or. Feminine?"

"Prosecutr-ess!" thunders the chorus, plunging to destruction on the swing of the thing; and "Oh, you stu-pids! you stu-pids!" cries Miss Purdie. "You intol-er-able stu-pids!" and the unhappy chorus hangs its head and cowers beneath the little storm it has let loose.

Delightfully appreciative, though, Miss Purdie, when the "break" of ten minutes comes and when the boys gorge plum-cake and milk and make her positively quiver with recitals of the terrible gallops on the pony; and delightfully concerned, too, when, as happens once or twice, Rollo is discovered to have a headache and is made to lie on the sofa in a rug and with a hot-water bottle, while the lessons are continued with Percival in fierce whispers and hissed "stu-pids." Delightfully inconsequent, moreover, Miss Purdie, who at the end of an especially exasperating morning, when Hunt is heard with the pony outside the gate, will suddenly cry: "Well, go away then, you thorough little stu-pids; go away!" and will drive them to the door and then at once will go into ecstatics over the pony and hurry Percival in for sugar, and quake with terror while the pony nibbles it from her hand, and stand and wave at her gate while they go flying down the road, one in the saddle, the other gasping behind.

Delightfully appreciative, Miss Purdie, and they learn to love her for all their terrible fear of her.

Percival, Miss Purdie finds, is the more affectionate—also the more troublesome. Rollo takes his cue from Percival and acts accordingly. "You are the ringleader!" cries Miss Purdie, stabbing a forefinger at Percival on the fearful morrow of the day on which truant was played—whose morning had seen Miss Purdie running between her house and her gate like a distressed hen abandoned by her chickens; whose afternoon had seen the alarm communicated to Burdon Old Manor and to "Post Offic"; and whose evening had discovered the disconsolate return to the village of two travel-stained and weary figures. "You are the ringleader in everything, and I don't know whether you ought to be more ashamed or you"—and she turns from the ringleader to stab her finger at the ring, as represented by Rollo—"or you, for allowing yourself to be led away by one so much younger."

"I've told you," protests Percival, "I've told you again and again we got lost; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

"Don't use that abom-inable phrase, sir! If you hadn't gone off—tempted Rollo to go off—you wouldn't have got lost, would you?"

Percival beams at her in his disarming manner. "Well, you see, we saw a fox and went after it and kept on seeing it and then found we were lost; so I should like—"

"Don't argue. I tell you, you are the ring-leader!"

She pauses and glares. "I should like to tell you," says the ringleader, still beaming, "about a very funny thing we saw. We saw—"

"Stand in the corner!" cries Miss Purdie. "Stand in the corner! You are incorrigible!" and she turns to Rollo with "Geography, sir!" in a voice that causes him to tremble.

III

Certainly Percival is the leader. He has the instinct of leadership. It is to be noted in the carriage and in the demeanour of his vigorous young person. A sturdy way of standing he has: squarely, with his round chin up, his head thrown back, his knees always braced, his arms never hanging limply but always slightly flexed at the elbows as though alert for action, his eyes widely opened, his gaze upwards and about him with the challenging air of one who expects entertainments to arise and would be quick to greet them. He is rarely still; he is rarely silent. A brisk way of movement he has; a high young voice; a compelling laugh with a clear note of "Ha! Ha! Ha!" as though the matter that tickles him tickles him with the boniest knuckles wherever he is ticklish. He has the instinct of leadership. When he is with Rollo and an affair arises, he does not suggest a plan of action; he immediately acts. On their rambles, when an obstacle or an emergency is discovered, it instantly arouses in him a reflex action by which vigorously, and without estimate of its difficulties, it is attacked. "You are so thoughtless, Percival, so thoughtless!" Aunt Maggie cries when he explains a mired and dripping state with "I jumped the ditch and found I couldn't jump."

"Well, but I wanted to get across, you see," Percival explains.

"If you had looked first you would have seen you couldn't get across."

"Well, but I did get across!"

"You didn't; you fell in, you stupid little boy."

"But I got across," beams Percival; and Aunt Maggie undoes her scolding by kissing him. She has marked this impetuous and determined spirit in him; and she knows it for the "I hold" spirit that is his by right of birth; one day he will present it to Lady Burdon.

He had the instinct of leadership. At first, in the excursions with Rollo, he unconsciously expected in Rollo a spirit equal to and similar with his own. At first, when he ran suddenly, or suddenly took a great jump, or set off at a quick trot towards some distant excitement, he expected to find Rollo at his side and was surprised to turn and find him hanging back, timid or tired. Very shortly he accepted the difference between them and emphasized that he was leader. It became natural to him that, with the action of starting to run or of storming a stout hedge, he should give to Rollo a hand that would aid him along or pull him through. It became natural, when a difficult place was reached, to release the hand with a little confident movement that implied "Stay;" to rush the obstacle; somehow to scramble to the further side, and then turn and cry directions and encouragement, ending always with "I'll catch you, you know; you'll be all right."

And as the weeks went on, the complement of this hardy spirit became natural to Rollo. Percival put out the hand of aid; the hand that desired aid was always ready. Rollo's hand acquired the habit of relying on Percival for physical support; his mind came to depend on Percival for moral benefit. However they were employed, he took his note from his leader. If Percival chose to be idle at their lessons, Rollo also would be inattentive and mischievous. On the days when Percival was immense in his promises to work hard, Rollo would sedulously apply himself. Percival led; he followed. Percival called the tune; Rollo danced to it. Percival stretched the hand; Rollo took it.

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD AS SHOWMAN: ALL THE JOLLY FUN

I

The stay at Burdon Old Manor came to an end; it had been so productive of health and happiness in Rollo, he became, as years went on, so much more and more devoted to Percival, that it was made the beginning of regular visits. The Manor continued to doze for the most part under the care of Mrs. Housekeeper Ferris, with Mr. Librarian Amber's library the only room that had no dust sheets about the furniture; but there were periodic openings: always a visit at Easter before the London season began, always a visit in August reaching into October when the London season was ended.

The visits marked the fullest times of Percival's life, as they marked the happiest of Rollo's; but life was steadily and joyously filled for Percival in these days, and he with a zest for it that carried him ardently along the hours.

The years were passing; he grew apace. It was a period, the villagers told one another, of rare proper weather: the winters hard with all the little hamlets tethered along Plowman's Ridge sometimes cut off for days together by heavy falls of snow; the springs most gentle and most radiant, escaping with a laugh from Winter's bondage and laughing down the lanes and up the hedgerows and through the fields, where every mother, from earth that mothered all, was fruitful of her kind; the summers glorious, with splendid days joining hands with splendid days to form a stately chain of sunshine through the warmer months.

Rare proper weather with the energy of its period in every hour, and Percival that energy's embodiment. He grew properly, the villagers said, and knew without a second glance what figure it was that went scudding along the Down in the young mornings, and knew without a second thought whose voice came singing to them as they stooped in their fields or trudged behind their herds. He grew lustily; lissom of limb, as might be seen; eager and finely turned of face, having an air and a wide eye that caused chance tourists to turn and look again; very big of spirit, as those knew who had the handling of him.

"He's getting that independent there's no doing a thing with him," stormed Honor one day, coming with Percival (both very red in the face) to lay a passage of arms for arbitrament before Aunt Maggie.

"Oh, Percival! And Honor is so kind to you!"

"I know, I know; but she tries to rule me, Aunt Maggie!"

"And ruling you want," Honor cried, "as your Aunt Maggie well knows. Spare the pickle and spoil the rod!"

"You've got it wrong!" said Percival with scornful triumph, and after he had stalked away, his head thrown up in an action that Aunt Maggie well remembered in Roly, she sought to placate Honor with thoughts that were frequently coming to her in those days. "He is getting big, Honor. I think we forget how he is growing. We mustn't keep him in too tightly."

Then there was Miss Purdie. "To my face!" cried Miss Purdie, fluttering into "Post Offic" one afternoon, "to my face he called the sum a beastly sum—the sum, mind you, I had set him myself! A beastly sum!" and then completely spoilt the horror of it by sighing and winding up, "but he is such a sweet. So lovable! So merry!"

"He's growing, you see," joined Aunt Maggie.

"Of course, he is," agreed Miss Purdie. "It's just his spirit. He's so manly!" and she gave herself a little shake and said: "Oh, I like a manly boy!"

Still, the truculence of character that had brought her warring down to "Post Offic" remained to be settled. Moreover, the boy's mind was developing outside the range of Miss Purdie's primers and exercise books. "He wants Latin," said Miss Purdie. "He wants algebra. He wants Euclid!" and the ladies decided that his tuition had better be handed over to Miss Purdie's brother, who could supply these correctives. They shook hands on it and agreed that Mr. Purdie should take over the duties on the morrow. On the doorstep Miss Purdie repeated the necessity with terrible emphasis: "He wants Latin! He wants algebra! But I shall miss our lessons together! Oh, dear, how I shall miss them!"

She hurried home with little sniffs which she strove to check by repeating very fiercely: "He wants Latin!"

II

Percival took up with immense zest the new freedom from petticoat control and the new regimen of lessons. He liked the new subjects; and it was notable in him that he carried into the exercise of his tasks the same quickness and determination with which he entered upon—and completed—all pleasanter affairs that came to his hand. Mr. Purdie, for his part, was enchanted. Mr. Purdie was plump and soft, with lethargic ways and pronounced timidity of character. In his youth Mr. Purdie had been called to the Bar. A very small legacy came to him thereafter, and his lymphatic nature led him at once to abandon town life, to go to sloth at his ease with his sister at Burdon village. He was vastly attracted by Percival. Very shortly after their introduction as master and pupil, he came to Aunt Maggie with the suggestion that Percival might spend with him some leisure as well as the school-hours. "A boy can be taught in his play as well as his work," he announced in his pompous manner. "At Percival's age, and as he grows, there are things in which only a man can guide him." He gave one of his shrill, absurd chuckles: "And I think Master Percival likes me. Eh, Percival?"

Percival eyed him doubtfully. He could not see stout and soft Mr. Purdie contributing much entertainment to his rambles. "Well, if you bring your tricycle, we might have some fun," he admitted.

Ah, these were the happy days. Happy, happy time! There was fun in alarming Mr. Purdie during their walks by taking him across fields that had fierce cows; by climbing trees with the plump tutor imploring beneath; by pretending to go out of depth when bathing in Fir-Tree Pool, with the plump tutor beseeching from the bank like an agitated hen that has hatched ducklings. There was particular fun in the tricycle.

The tricycle was an immense affair of remote construction, having the steering-wheel attached by a bar behind and manipulated by handles on either side of the seat that required almost as much winding as a clock—"twiddling" Percival called it—when the machine was to be deflected from a straight passage. Percival's legs were too short for the treadles, Mr. Purdie's too soft for propulsion up even the gentlest incline. Tricycle excursions took, therefore, the form of laborious pushing, with inordinate perspiration on the part of Mr. Purdie, until the brow of a hill was gained, when Percival would balance upon the steering wheel bar, Mr. Purdie in considerable trepidation on the seat, and away they would go with delighted shoutings from Percival—legs dangling, hands clutching the plump tutor's coat—and anguished entreaties of "Steady! steady! Don't touch my arms! Don't touch my arms!" from Mr. Purdie, back-pedalling tremendously, clutching at the brake, winding at the handles. Then the laborious ascent of the next slope, Mr. Purdie dripping at every pore, Percival crimson in the face and carrying on a long argument: "If you'd only work when we get near the bottom and not use that rotten brake, we'd get halfway up and not have this awful pushing!"

"Well, kindly do not push me," says Mr. Purdie, very hot.

Happy, happy time! Disaster came on the day on which there entered Mr. Purdie's eye the fly that he always dreaded. Mr. Purdie in the seat was back-pedalling with immense caution down Five Furlong Hill; Percival on the steering bar behind was peering ahead round the plump tutor's ample girth and at intervals urging: "Now let her go!"

It was the fly that let her go. Whack! came the fly into Mr. Purdie's eye. "Whoa!" cried Mr. Purdie. "Bother! dear me! Whoa!" Up went Mr. Purdie's knees in the twitch of pain; up came his hand to his tortured eye; round went the released pedals; forward shot the tricycle.

"Hurrah!" cried Percival. "Well done! Ripping of you!"

Mr. Purdie, between agony of his eye and terror for his safety, gave a shrill cry of dismay; took a grab at the brake and a grab back at his eye; received two terrible blows on the backs of his legs that fumbled wildly for the whizzing treadles, and barked out: "Brake! Brake! Fly in my eye!"

"Which eye?" Percival shouted, enjoying the speed enormously.

The alarmed tutor bundled his words in a heap the better to get them out and arrest the catastrophe that threatened.

"Catchabrakeandontbesilly! Catchabrakeabekilled!"

They whizzed!

Percival bawled: "We don't want the brake! I can't reach the brake! I like it! We're simply whizzing! Mind your legs!" His cap was gone. His hair fluttered in the rushing wind. His face was crimson with excited glee. His clear laughter on its strong note of "Ha! Ha! Ha!" rose high above the rattling of all the machine's vitals and the cries of the agonised bearer of the fly. He clung tightly to the podgy waist and shouted: "Ha! Ha! Ha! We're whizzing! We're whizzing!"

Mr. Purdie took another six hammers on his legs and struck a note of new alarm.

"I'm blind, you know! I can't see! I can't steer!"

"A straight road!" Percival bawled. "Look out, though! A corner coming!"

"How can I look out? Draggle your legs on the ground!"

"Twiddle to the left!" Percival bellowed. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Twiddle, Mr. Purdie, twiddle!"

Mr. Purdie twiddled frantically; the tricycle outraced his efforts. "Look out for yourself!" from Percival, and with a loud and exceeding bitter cry from Mr. Purdie, the machine plunged at the hedge, planted Mr. Purdie very firmly into the midst, shot Percival firmly on top of him, took a violent somersault across the ditch that skirted the hedge, and poised itself above them.

Mr. Purdie's last despairing cry cut sharply across Percival's peals of laughter—then the crash. The fluttering beat of wings as a cloud of chaffinches, terrified by this amazing avalanche, burst from the floor of the wood beyond the hedge, then peal on peal of laughter again from Percival.

In muffled tones from the depth of the hedge: "It is a miracle we are not killed. Where are you, Percival?"

Percival checked his mirth sufficiently to reply: "Well, I don't know where I am! My head is down here, but where my legs are I don't know."

"One of them is under me and hurting me terribly. Move, please."

Between the peals of laughter: "I can't move, Mr. Purdie. I'm practically standing on my head, you know."

"I don't know anything about it. My face is almost in something highly unpleasant—a dead bird, I think. Please stop that laughter and try to do something. The odour here is most noisome."

"Well, but I can't stop laughing. Did you see us shoot?"

"Please try to control yourself. I did not see us shoot."

A mighty effort causes Percival's head and shoulders to come up with a jerk; Mr. Purdie feels the weight of pupil and tricycle removed from his back, and there follows another crash and further yells of laughter.

In muffled agony from the hedge: "Now what has happened?"

"Well, I'm bothered if I haven't fallen again! I've fallen out, though."

Out of the depths: "Percival! Percival! Don't be such a silly little boy! Pull me out!"

"Well, I'm all mixed up in this awful trike, you know. Now, I'm up!"

"Pray pull me, then. I am retching with this noisome smell."

"Well, there's nothing to pull!" cries Percival, plunging round the tremendous stern that sticks out of the hedge. "Your trousers are simply tight!"

Out of the depths: "Tch! Tch! Push me sideways, then."

The mammoth stern is pushed sideways and hauled backways, and presently begins to rise, and presently the stout tutor is ponderously disgorged from the hedge, and staggers forth with grunts and moans, and collapses on the roadside, feet in ditch, very bedraggled and unfortunate looking.

"Don't think I'm laughing at you," Percival says. "I'm really very sorry for you. But you're not hurt, you know. Let me rub you down with leaves."

"I am terribly shaken. Do not touch me for a few minutes, please."

"Is the fly still in your eye?"

"I don't know where the fly is."

"Your trousers are awfully torn."

"Be silent, please. I am dazed."

He remains dazed when at last they begin to trudge home, the wrecked tricycle left for a cart. But at the top of the hill that plunged them to disaster, the infectious spurts of laughter at his side challenge his self-esteem and he sets out to sound his reputation in Percival's regard.

"I think I steered rather well, considering I couldn't see."

Percival is always generous: "Splendidly! Oh, dear, I'm aching with laughing!"

"I was only afraid for you, Percival."

"We whizzed, you know! We simply whizzed!"

Mr. Purdie glances back down the hill and shudders to have whizzed it. "Were you laughing all the way down?"

"Anybody would laugh at a whizz like that."

The plump tutor has a close acquaintance with one person who would not. The remark pricks him and he finds a comforting answer. "Only very silly people laugh at danger."

"Well, I didn't know it was danger," said Percival; and Mr. Purdie first looks at him thoughtfully and then gives one of his shrill, absurd chuckles.

III

Happy, happy time! There were the visits to Mr. Hannaford, always made on a whole holiday because an early start was necessary, where the little 'orse farm was progressing famously and where Percival was made quite extraordinarily welcome. Terrible leg-and-cane cracks would announce in which quarter of the farm Mr. Hannaford was to be found, and Percival would discover Mr. Hannaford watching a little circus 'orse at exercise, or watching the builders at work in the brick stables that were slowly displacing the line of sheds, and watching all the time to the accompaniment of bellowing instructions punctuated by leg-and-cane cracks of astounding volume.

Percival would plant himself squarely by Mr. Hannaford's side in Mr. Hannaford's position—legs apart, head thrown back—and would eagerly follow the proceedings until Mr. Hannaford suddenly would observe him and would cry in a voice the whole farm might hear: "Why, it's the little Pocket Marvel! Bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't! However long a you been there, little master?"

Percival, beaming all over his face and putting his small hand into the tremendous shake of Mr. Hannaford's shoulder of mutton fist: "Only about ten minutes, thank you, Mr. Hannaford. Don't you mind me, you know. I like watching."

"Ah, and I've got something for you to watch," Mr. Hannaford would say. "Now you come over here with me. Got that little lordship with you?"

"Not come back yet," Percival would reply, capering along, tremendously happy. "How are you going along, Mr. Hannaford? Properly?"

"Properly to rights! Look at that now!" And with a terrible leg-and-cane crack Mr. Hannaford would pause before the new stables and call Percival's attention to some new feature that had arisen since his last visit. "Names on the doors, d'you see? 'Crocker's' on that door, 'Maddox's' on this door. Do a deal in little 'orses with Crocker's circus; take your gross profit; set aside share of expenses; set aside wear and tear; set aside emergency fund; take your net profit; build your stable; call it Crocker's. Same with Maddox: deal, gross, share, wear, emergency, net, stable—call it Maddox! What d'you think of that for a notion?"

"Why, I call it jolly fine, Mr. Hannaford," Percival replies. "I call that a proper notion. Reminds you how you did it, doesn't it?"

"Why, that's just exactly what it does do!" cries Mr. Hannaford, enormously delighted. "Just the very notion of it, bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't! Now you come along over here." And Mr. Hannaford would leg-and-cane crack, and Percival would trot and chatter, over to another marvel, where a similar performance would be gone through, owner and spectator tremendously happy, and both profoundly serious.

Mr. Hannaford would usually propose lunch after this. Mr. Hannaford permitted no women in his establishment; but the long, low-roofed dining-room in the old farmhouse was kept at a shining cleanliness, and the meal was invitingly cooked, by a one-armed man of astoundingly fierce appearance and astonishingly mild disposition, who answered to the names of Ob and Diah accordingly as Mr. Hannaford preferred the former or latter half of the Obadiah to which the one-armed man was entitled, and who had left the greater part of his missing arm in the lion's cage he had attended when travelling with Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus.

Three places were always set at the table when Percival visited. One for Mr. Hannaford at one end, one at the other end for brother Stingo—"in case," as Mr. Hannaford would say—and one on Mr. Hannaford's right for Percival. There was a tremendous silver tankard of ale for Mr. Hannaford, a similar tankard for Percival—requiring both hands and containing milk—and always, when Mr. Hannaford raised the dish-cover, there developed from the cloud of steam a plump chicken which Mr. Hannaford called chickun and Percival chicking and which they both fell upon with quite remarkable appetites.

"Well, it's a most astonishing thing to me," Percival would say when the cover went up, and the chicken settled out of the steam. "Most amazing! You know I like chicking better than anything, and every time I come you just happen to have chicking for dinner! Most amazing to me, you know!"

And Mr. Hannaford would lay down the carving knife and fork and stare at the chicken and say: "Well, it is a chickun again, so it is, bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!" and would give a tremendous wink at Ob in order to enjoy with him the joke arising from the fact that directly Percival was sighted on the farm a messenger was sent to Ob to prepare the meal that Percival liked best.

Then they would eat away, and pull away at the colossal tankards, and Percival would always make a point of saying: "Stingo not home?"

A long pull at the tankard and a heavy sigh from Mr. Hannaford: "Not just yet, little master. Still restless, I'm afraid. Still restless."

And Percival, in the old phrase and with the air of a grandfather: "Well, he'll settle down, you know. He'll settle down."

"Why, that's just what I say!" Mr. Hannaford would exclaim, immensely comforted. "Settle down—of course he will! Just what I'm always telling him, bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!"

Always the same jolly lunch, always the same mingled seriousness and jolly fun, always the same jokes. Percival did not know that much of it was carefully planned by Mr. Hannaford that he might enjoy the fullest relish of the Pocket Marvel's visit. There was the great chicken joke, there was also the killing joke for the production of which by Percival Mr. Hannaford would dawdle lunch to an inordinate length.

At length it would come: "Nothing I can have a ride on, I suppose, Mr. Hannaford?" Percival would say with careful carelessness.

"Never a norse fit for it," Mr. Hannaford would reply, equally off-hand.

A heavy sigh from Percival: "Oh, dear! Sure, I suppose?"

"Certain! Got a little brown 'orse—but there, you'd never ride him."

"I bet I would! I bet I would!"

Mr. Hannaford, looking terribly fierce and in a very violent voice: "Bet you wouldn't!"

"Try me, then! Only try me!"

And Mr. Hannaford would bounce up and seize his cane, and they would rush off, and the saddle would be put on the little brown 'orse, and Percival would mount him and gallop him and cry "You see! You see!" And Mr. Hannaford would pretend huge amazement and declare that Percival was a proper little Pocket Marvel, bless his eighteen stun proper if he wasn't.

Once or twice Stingo would be there, and then the jolly fun would be jollier than ever; and in the evening Mr. Hannaford's gig with the big black mare would come around and the brothers would labour up into the seat and Percival would squeeze in between them and they would let him drive and he would pop the mare along at a lashing speed and there would be the highest good-fellowship. He would be set down at the top of Five Furlong Hill—nothing would induce Mr. Hannaford to come into the village where women might be met. "Well, good night, Mr. Hannaford; good night, Mr. Stingo. Thank you most awfully for all your kindness to me. I hope I'll come again soon."

The brothers would usually wait until he reached the turning to the village; setting up, the one a husky shout, and the other a terrible bellow, in reply to the faint "Good night!" that came to them through the dusk.

"I never in all my life took to nothing, not even a little 'orse, like I have to that little master," Mr. Hannaford would say. "Never seen such a proper one, never."

And Stingo, with painful huskiness: "Ought to ha' been a little lordship!"

"Why, that's just exactly what I say," Mr. Hannaford would reply, enormously pleased. "Bless my eighteen stun proper if it isn't!"

IV

Happy, happy time! There were the visits to mild old Mr. Amber in the library at Burdon Old Manor. Strongest contrast, the delights here, to those enjoyed among the little 'orses. Strongest contrast, mild old Mr. Amber with his stooping shoulders and his gentle ways, to tremendous Mr. Hannaford with his lusty back and his vigorous habits.

But the same eager welcome: "Well, well, Master Percival, this is indeed a pleasant surprise! And we are just sitting down to our tea—and I declare Mrs. Ferris has sent us some strawberry jam! Now if that isn't too fortunate I don't know what is!"

"Well, it's awfully jolly," Percival agrees. "Mrs. Ferris makes very nice strawberry jam, doesn't she?"

In the act of pouring tea, mild old Mr. Amber sets down the pot and emphasises with his glasses. "My dear sir—my dear Percival, she makes the very best strawberry jam! Mrs. Ferris has made that strawberry jam for forty years—to our certain knowledge, for-ty years."

Percival's rounded eyes show his appreciation of this consistent industry. "Must have made a lot," is his comment.

"Tons," says Mr. Amber. "My dear sir—my dear Percival, I should say—tons." He stabs the glasses at his listener. "And every berry, sir, every single berry, wet season or dry, from our own gardens!"

It always comes back to that with Mr. Amber. The old Manor, the House of Burdon, is his world and his life, and he is mightily jealous you shall know their quality.

There is generally a little interlude of this kind in the course of the visit. Its effect stays for a few minutes, Mr. Amber slowly repeating to himself "every berry—every single berry, sir," in the tone of one impressively warning against any challenge of his statement; and then he simmers down and recollects that his visitor is the Percival who occupies a large portion of his heart. He likes to take Percival's hand. He likes to feel that warm young grasp within his own chilly old palm. He likes to lead the boy and feel those sturdy young fingers twitch to the excitement of what tales he can tell or what treasures he can show.

"Now what have we got to show you in our shelves this evening? Nothing much, we fear. Oh, yes, we have, though! Those folios—we've rearranged them so as to fill the ninth and tenth in this tier. That was your suggestion, wasn't it? I agree, you know, I quite agree. It's an improvement."

"Keeps them stiffer," says Percival, head on one side, rather proud.

"Just exactly what it does! Keeps them stiffer. Lessens the strain. We ought to have thought of that, Percival. We reproach ourselves there, you know."

There is a tinge of the self-reproach in his voice, and Percival hastens with: "Of course you would have done it yourself, as you said, but you get into your ways, don't you?"

"Well, we do," agrees Mr. Amber, very comforted. "That's just what it is—we get into our ways."

At other times when Percival comes to the library, there is no answer to his knock on the door. He turns the handle very gently; pokes in his head very quietly; peers all about the apartment; cannot see Mr. Amber; enters very cautiously; and presently espies him perched high aloft on one of the wheeled book-ladders, sitting cross-legged, catalogue on knee, pencil in hand, brow puckered in mental labour.

Then Percival closes the door behind him, so that there shall be scarcely the faintest click, and gives a tiny cough and says: "Very busy, Mr. Amber?"

"'M-'m," says Mr. Amber, wagging his head, waving the pencil and frowning horribly. "'M-'m!"

Percival tiptoes with enormous caution to the other ladder; wheels it to a shelf where he has found entertainment; selects his book; perches himself; and for an hour or more the two, each on his ladder, the child and the man, the lissom young form and the withered old figure, sit high among the books, entranced among the worlds that books discover.

"'M-'m!" says Mr. Amber at intervals, frantically waving.

"Only coughed," explains Percival. "Only that choking, you know. It—"

"'M-'m! 'M-'m!" and they bury themselves again.

That is the usual course. Once or twice there have been conversations across the room from the tops of the ladders. Percival has looked up from his book to find Mr. Amber turned towards him and regarding him with eyes that do not appear to see his smile of greeting. "Mr. Amber, is there anything funny about me that you look at me so?"

Mr. Amber will start as though he had been dreaming. "Funny? Eh? Why, no, Percival; nothing funny at all."

"If it is my boots, they are quite clean. I gave them twelve wipes each, like you told me."

"It's not your boots."

Silence between them.

"Funny us two sitting up here like this, like two mountains in the sea. Rather jolly, isn't it?"

"It recalls to me," says Mr. Amber, "another little boy who used to sit up there just as you sit.... In this dim light ... there are ways you have, Percival..."

Silence again. Twilight gathering in the corners of the vast room. A moth softly thudding the window-pane. There is something in the atmosphere that seems to hold Percival. At "Post Offic" he likes the lamps to be lit when dusk draws down; here there is a feeling of gentleness about him, with curious half-thoughts and with half-familiar gropings and stretchings of the shadows. "Thinking without thinking, as if I was in some one else who was thinking," he has described it to Aunt Maggie.

"Your voice, too," says Mr. Amber suddenly.

Percival knows what is in Mr. Amber's mind. "Thinking of your young lordship, aren't you, Mr. Amber?"

"He used to sit there," Mr. Amber replies. "In this dim light ... seeing you there..."

Silence again. Twilight wreathing from the corners across the ceiling; shadows grouping and moving in new fantasies; soft thuddings of the moth as though a shadow beat to enter.

Percival stretches a hand, and against the window's light perceives a shadow he has watched drift caressingly about his fingers.

Mr. Amber, little above a whisper, peering through the gloom: "Why do you stretch your hand so, my lord?"

"I'm touching a shadow that's come right up to me;" and then Percival realises the last words, and laughs and says: "You called me 'my lord!'—you did really, Mr. Amber!"

"God bless me!" says Mr. Amber, shaking himself—"God bless me, we are getting the shadows in our brains. Come down and watch me light the lamps."

V

Happy, happy time! Best of all when the family is at the Old Manor and when the friendship with Rollo can be taken up where it was left, to be deepened and to be discovered more than ever fruitful of delights. The boys are older now. Childish games are done with; very serious talks (so they believe) take the place of the chatter and the "pretending" of earlier days: they discuss affairs, mostly arising from adventures in the books they read; there has been a general election, and they agree that the Liberals are awful rotters; there has been one of the little wars, and they kindle together to the glory of British arms and wish they might be Young Buglers and be thanked by the general before the whole regiment like the heroes of Mr. Henty's books.

Percival calls the tune, starts the discussions, constructs the adventures. Rollo follows the lead, leaning on the quicker mind just as he relies on the stronger arm and the speedier foot when they are on their rambles together. It is Rollo who throws the acorn that hits the stout farm boy driving a milk cart beneath them, as they perch in a tree. It is Percival who scrambles down responsive to the insults of the enraged boy, and takes a most fearful battering that the stout boy's stout arms are able to inflict.

"I ought to have fought him," Rollo says half-tearfully, with shamed and shuddering glances at the bloody handkerchief held to the suffering nose, the lumped forehead and the blackened eye. "He said the one that hit him. It was my shot."

Percival, in terrible fury, muffled from behind the handkerchief: "How could you fight him? Dash those great clodhopping arms of his! A mile long! I'll have another go at him, I swear I will."

It is Rollo who cries: "Percival, it will kill us!" when the ram they have annoyed comes with a fourth shattering crash against the boards of the pigsty to which they have fled for safety. It is Percival who cries: "Run, when he sees us!" whips over the palisade, springs across the field, and takes the tail-end of an appalling batter as he hurls himself through the far gate.

"How ever could you dare?" Rollo asks, joining him in the road. "Has he hurt you frightfully?"

"How could you have escaped?" says Percival, limping. "He'd have got you in that sty. I knew I could beat him. Dash the brute, it stings! There's the kind of stick I want! I'll teach him manners!"

It is Rollo who gives an appealing look at Percival when Lord Burdon starts them in a race for sixpence. It is Percival who whispers as they run: "We'll make it a dead heat."

"It was awfully decent of you, Percival," Rollo exclaims, as they go to spend the prize at Mrs. Minnifie's sweet shop.

"Oh, it's rotten beating one another when people are looking on," Percival replies. "I vote for lemonade as well, don't you?"

It is the spirit between them that had its first evidence on the day when the visit was made to Mr. Hannaford to purchase the little black 'orse. Then Rollo hung back while Percival jumped to ride; then Percival brought him forward, encouraging him, to taste the fun. So now, as the years sunder their natures more sharply, and as affection more strongly bridges the gulf, the more sharply does the one lead, the other follow; the more naturally does the one support, the other rely.

Everybody notices it: Aunt Maggie, who only smiles; Lady Burdon, who says: "Rollo, Percival's a regular little father to you, it seems to me. Don't let him rule you, you know. Remember what you are, Rollo mine." Even Egbert Hunt notices it. Mr. Hunt is still attached to Rollo's person. Sick yedaches trouble him less frequently; but his hatred of tyrangs has deepened with the increasing tenure of his servitude. He spends less of his wages on vegules; much of it on socialistic literature of an inflammatory nature; but he never forgets the sympathy of Percival in the vegule days, and he is strongly joined with all those who, meeting the boy, have a note stirred by his sunny nature.

"Always does me good to see you," Mr. Hunt says one day. "Something about you. He'll never be a slave who works for you."

"Well, who's going to work for me?" Percival inquires.

"The point!" says Mr. Hunt with impressive gloom. "The very point." He fumbles in his pocket and produces thumbed papers, just as he fumbled and produced vegules at an earlier day. "It's in the lowlier"—he consults a paper—"in the lowlier strata that you find the men a man can follow, but the men that can't lead owing to the heel of the tyrang. It's the Bloodsuckers we got to serve." He indicates the paper: "Bloodsuckers, they call 'em here."

"Silly rot," says Percival.

"Ah, you're young," Mr. Hunt returns. "You're young. You'll learn different when they begin to sap your blood for you. You're a higher strata than me, Master Percival. Benificent influence of education, you've had. But you're under the Bloodsuckers. Squeeze you out like an orindge, they will, and throw yer away. Me one day, you another." He indicated the paper again. "There's a strong bit here called 'Squeezed Orindges.' Makes yer boil."

"I'm boiling already," says Percival. "It's a jolly hot day. If you don't like being what you are, I wonder you don't be something else."

"No good," Mr. Hunt tells him. "Out of one tyrang's heel and under another. We've got to suffer and endure, us orindges, until the day when they are swept away like chaff before the wind."

Percival is rather interested: "Well, who's going to sweep them? and sweep whom?"

"Ah!" says Mr. Hunt darkly. "Who? Makes yer boil."

"Well, I shouldn't worry, Hunt," says Percival, in the old "Have you got one of your poor sick yedaches?" tone. "I shouldn't, really. I feel angry sometimes, but you've only got to have a game of something, you know. There's Rollo! Come on down and help us to build that raft on Fir-Tree Pool. We'll have a jolly time. Rollo! Hunt's going to help us, so we can get that big plank down now! Come on, Hunt!"

He bounds away towards Rollo, and Mr. Hunt, watching before he starts to follow, says: "Ah, pity there's not more like you! You ought to ha' been one of them." He scowls horribly in the direction of Lady Burdon, who is waving to the boys from the door. "One o' them, you ought to ha' been. Makes yer boil!"

CHAPTER VI

JAPHRA AND IMA AND SNOW-WHITE-AND-ROSE-RED

I

And there were three new friends who contributed to this happy, happy time and who came vitally to contribute to later years. There were Japhra and Ima, who lived in a yellow caravan that was sometimes attached to that Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus with which Mr. Hannaford traded in little 'orses; and there was Dora, whose mother was that Mrs. Espart of Abbey Royal at Upabbot over the Ridge who—as Miss Oxford had told Lady Burdon—did not send her little girl to lessons with Miss Purdie because of the post-office little boy.

Percival first met Japhra and Ima on a day not long after the end of Rollo's first visit, when—his playmate gone—he was temporarily a little lonely. He came upon them by Fir-Tree Pool, stepped through the belt of trees that surround the pool and halted in much delight at the entrancing sight his eyes gave him.

Here was a yellow caravan with little curtained windows, a thing most pregnant of mysteries to eight-years-old. A big white horse, unharnessed from the van, was cropping the turf. There was an iron pot hanging above a jolly fire of sticks. On the steps of the van a girl of about Percival's own age sat knitting. She was olive of face, with long, black hair; her legs were bare and they looked very long, Percival thought. By the fire, astride of a felled tree trunk, was a little man with a very brown face that was marked like a sailor's with many puckered little lines. He had a tight-lipped mouth with a short pipe that seemed a natural part of it, and he wore a long jacket and had a high hat of some rough, brown fur. He was reading a book; and as Percival stood watching, he put a finger to mark his place and looked up slowly as though he had known Percival was there but wished to read to a certain point before interrupting himself.

He looked up and Percival noticed that his eyes, set in that brown, puckered face, were uncommonly bright. "Welcome, little master," said he. "All the luck!"

"Hullo!" said Percival. "Excuse me staring. This is funny to me, you know."

"Quiet, though," said the little man, his eyes twinkling; "and that's the best thing in life."

Percival came up to him, vastly attracted. "Do you live in that van?"

"That's where I live, little master—Ima and I."

Percival stared at the girl on the steps, who stared back at him and then smiled. "Ima? That's a funny name," he said.

"Maybe she's a funny girl," said the little man, twinkling more than ever.

Percival took it quite seriously. "Well, her legs are long," he said appraisingly.

"They can run, though, little master," said the girl. She had a curiously soft voice, Percival noticed. But he was rather puzzled with it all and remained serious. "Is your name funny, too?" he asked the little man.

The little man's tight lips were stretched in what Percival came to know for his most advanced sign of amusement. He opened his lips very slightly when he spoke, and the short pipe that seemed to grow there did not appear at all to incommode his speech. "Why, try it for thyself," said the little man,—"Japhra."

"Well, I've not heard it before, you know," said Percival politely. "You don't mind my asking questions, do you?" he added. "This is rather funny to me, you know."

"Why, I'm a questioner myself, little master," the little man assured him. "I'm questioning always. I go through life seeking an answer."

"What for?" asked Percival.

"Why, that's the question, little master," said the little man. "What for? Who knows?"

Percival regarded him with the same puzzled air that he sometimes gave to Aunt Maggie. "Well, if you don't mind," he said, "what are you, then?"

Far from minding, Japhra seemed to like it. Twinkling away: "Why, that's another question I ask and cannot answer," said he. "What is any man? One thing to one man and one thing to another—a riddle to himself, little master. But I can unriddle thee this much: Wintertime I am a tinker that mends folks' pots and pans; Springtimes I am Punch-and-Judy-man that makes the children laugh; Summertimes I am a fighter that fights in the booths. I have been prize-fighter that fights with the knuckle; cattleman over the sea; jockey, and wrestler, and miner, and preacher once, and questioner since I was thy size; there's unriddling for thee."

"It's a good lot," said Percival gravely. "What are you just now, please?"

"Or a bad lot," said Japhra. "Who knows?—and there's the question again! No escape from it." He looked solemn for a moment and then twinkled again. "Just now a fighter, little master. To-morrow I join Boss Maddox's circus for the summer with my boxing booth."

"Boss Maddox!" cried Percival. "Why, Mr. Stingo goes with Maddox's circus. Do you know Mr. Stingo?"

"None better," said Japhra. "I am of Stingo's crowd, as we say. Dost thou?"

"I know him very well," Percival declared. "I know his brother best. They call me a Pocket Marvel, you know; so I should like to know what you think of that?"

"Why, I think that's what thou art," said Japhra. "A rare one. There were fairies at thy christening, little master."

"What for?" asked Percival and asked it so seriously that Japhra twinkled anew and replied: "Why, there's the question again. What for? Why that sunny face they have given thee? and those fine limbs? and that straight back? What for? There's some purpose in it, little master."

He looked strangely at Percival as though behind his twinkling he indeed questioned these matters and found, as he had said, a question in all he saw. But when he saw how mystified he held Percival, he stopped his searching look and asked: "Any more questions, little master?"

He had kept his finger on the open page of his book all this time; and Percival pointed and said: "Well, what are you reading, if you please?" and was told "Robinson Crusoe."

"Why, I'm reading that!" cried Percival in much delight.

"Then thou art reading one of the only three books a man wants," said Japhra. "There's 'Pilgrim's Progress'—"

"I've read that too! In Mr. Amber's library—"

"And there's the Bible."

"And that as well!" cried Percival.

"Why," said Japhra—not twinkling now, but grave—"why, then, thou hast read the beginning and end of wisdom. Crusoe and Pilgrim and Bible—those are the books for a man. I read them and read them and always read them new. They are the books for a questioner, and thou art that amain. And they are the books for a fighter, and that is thy part. I have unriddled thee so far, little master. I know the fighting type. Mark me when the years come. A fighter, thou."

He placed a blade of grass in "Robinson Crusoe" and put the volume beneath his arm. He got up and took Percival's small hand in his horny fist. "Come thou and see my van, little master," said he. "We are friends—thou and I and Ima here." And then he twinkled again. "And why? What brought thee whom the fairies attended and that has read the books and is the fighting type? What brought thee here? Why, there's the question again!"

It was the beginning of Percival's chiefest friendship of them all. In the rare proper seasons that followed one another through this the happy, happy time, the van came more and more frequently Lethamwards. Summertimes it was away with Stingo's crowd in Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus. But Wintertimes it would come tinkering, and sometimes remain a week or more snow-bound, and Springtimes Punch-and-Judying through the Burdon hamlets; and these were happy, happy times indeed. There was all Japhra's lore, all his dimly understood "questioning" to hear; and all his stories of his strange and varied life; and all his reading aloud from his three books, who could read them and put a meaning into them as none other could. And there was the boxing to learn, with Percival a very apt and eager pupil and Japhra insistent that it was a proper game—the only proper game for a man. And once every summer there was the visit of Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus to Great Letham, where Percival,—introduced by Japhra, sponsored by Stingo,—was made enormously welcome by rough, odd van folk who were of "Stingo's crowd." He learnt the sharp and growing difference between Stingo's crowd and Boss Maddox's men. Boss Maddox was boss and of increasing wealth and weight: attracting showmen to his following from many parts of the country and incorporating them in his business, but unable to win the allegiance of the little knot of independents who called Stingo "Boss," and hating them for it. Rough, odd men who made an immense deal of Percival and had rough, odd names: Old Four-Eyes, who wore spectacles and had a Mermaid and a Mummified Man; Old One-Eye, whose left eye was gone and had a Wild West Rifle Range; Old 'Ave One, who was given to drink ("'Ave one, mate?") and had the Ring 'em where Yer Like—A Prize fer All; and the rest of them. Percival never mixed with the Maddox crowd but once, when he boxed, and to the immense delight of Japhra and all the Stingo men, defeated, a red-haired, skinny youth of his own age, whom Boss Maddox was introducing to the public as the Boy Wonder Pugilist. "Looks like a fox to me," Percival said aloud, when he first saw the Boy Wonder. The Boy Wonder heard, and the men who stood about heard and laughed; there certainly was a foxy look about the Juvenile Wonder's cunning face with its red head. The Wonder furiously resented the remark and the laughter; expressed a desire to shut Percival's mouth; succeeded in shutting one of his eyes, but was certainly beaten.

He became Percival's first enemy—and chance set aside the first enemy for further use.

II

Ima, when the van came Lethamwards, was Percival's first girl friend, and chance had use also in store for her. She was a strange, quiet, very gentle thing, but one that could run, as she had told him, and bold and active stuff for any ramble. With odd ways, though.

"Ima, you do look at me an awful lot," Percival told her in the early days, catching her large eyes fixed upon him.

"Well, thou art not like other boys I see," she told him; and a little while after she asked him, "Dost thou know little ladies with white skins like thine, little master?"

"I'm brown!" said Percival indignantly.

She shook her head. "But little ladies?"

"I know one," said Percival. "White! Well, you'd stare if you saw her, Ima. Snow-White-and-Rose-Red, I call her," and in his tone was something akin to the mingled admiration and awe with which small schoolboys speak of their cricket captain.

She was silent for a moment; then, "Well, tell me, little master," she said.

It was of Dora that he told her.

When Lady Burdon had returned that call paid on her by Mrs. Espart from Abbey Royal she had been as greatly captivated by Dora as she had been taken by Dora's mother. She found in Mrs. Espart a curiously cold and high-bred air that appealed to her—being a quality she was at pains to cultivate in herself—and appealed the more in that it very graciously unbent towards her. Its unbending was explainable by the quality that, for her own part, she presented to Mrs. Espart—that of her rank and station.

Mrs. Espart had been married in her teens, brought from school for the purpose, by a mother whose whole conception of duty in regard to her daughters was wealthy marriage, and who had fastened upon it in this case in the person of Mr. Espart—a nice little man, an indifferently bred little man, but a most obviously well-possessed little man. The girl was hurriedly fetched from her finishing school, whirled through a headachy fortnight of corseting and costuming, and put in Mr. Espart's way and then in his possession with the docility of one educated from childhood for such a purpose. Used as a woman who never had realised there was a life beyond the cloisters bounded by lessons in deportment, in the nice languages and the nice arts; as a wife who never yet had been a child but always a young lady, Mrs. Espart discovered that she was mated with a vulgarian, Mr. Espart that he had married, as he expressed it, "a frozen statue." She thought of him and despised him as the one; he thought of her, feared her, and adored her as the other. The chill she struck into his mind communicated itself in some way to his bones, and very shortly after he had bought Abbey Royal—her command being that he should nurse the local political interests, enrich the Party from his coffers and so win her the social status her sisters had—he began to shrivel and incontinently died—frozen.

Mrs. Espart proceeded to bring up the child born of this marriage precisely as she had herself been brought up,—in narrow cloisters, that is to say, in dutiful obedience and for the ultimate purpose of suitable marriage. She repeated in Dora's training the training she had received from her own mother, its object the same, with this difference—that whereas in her case that object was a wealthy match, in Dora's—Mr. Espart having made wealth unnecessary—it was position. Time was absurdly young for any plans when Mrs. Espart first met Lady Burdon, but plans had crossed her mind when she drove out to leave cards at the Manor: she had heard of Rollo. She made Lady Burdon very welcome when Lady Burdon came.

Dora was two years younger than Rollo, Lady Burdon found. When, on the occasion of this visit, she was brought to the drawing-room—a strikingly pretty child in a curiously unchildish way—she already showed marks of the machinery that ordered her life. She was curiously prim, that is to say, of noticeably trained deportment; curiously self-assured and yet not childishly frank; curiously correct of speech and with a dutiful trick of adding "Mamma" to every sentence she addressed to her mother.

She was her mother's child; similarly trained; similarly developing. "A very well brought-up child," as Lady Burdon afterwards commented to her husband, and noted in her also the strong promise of the beauty that later years were to realise. She was to be notably tall and was already slim and shot-up for her years; she was to be notably fair of complexion and showed already a wonderful mildness and whiteness of skin, curiously heightened by the little flush of colour that warmed in a sharply defined spot on either cheek. Lady Burdon rallied her once during their conversation—the subject was French lessons, which it appeared she found "Terribly puzzling, Lady Burdon, do I not, Mamma?" and her face responded by a curious deepening of the red shades, her cheeks and brow gaining a hue almost of transparency by contrast.

It was that quality and that characteristic that made Percival—meeting her when she was brought over to tea with Rollo—call her, as he told Ima, Snow-White-and-Rose-Red.

The name was from his fairy book, and to his mind fitted exactly this fragile and well-behaved and reserved Miss who he thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It fitted her more surely yet when he came to know her when she was fourteen and just returned, Rollo also having come to the Manor, for her first holidays from the highly exclusive school to which she was sent.

By then the friendship between Lady Burdon and Mrs. Espart had grown to closest intimacy. They met, and Dora and Rollo met, intimately in London; and Abbey Royal was rarely closed when Burdon Old Manor was opened. Mrs. Espart had suffered to lapse that attitude towards the little post office boy which Lady Burdon had termed "ridiculous." She never liked, and certainly never encouraged, Percival, but she accepted him as undetachable from Rollo, whom by now she encouraged greatly in friendship with Dora, and it was thus that Dora at rare intervals contributed to these days of the happy, happy time.

At fourteen she was actively advanced in her first term at the exclusive school by the machine that was shaping her. Strikingly now she promised, as always she had hinted, what should be hers when full maidenhood was hers. The singular fairness of her complexion was the grace that first struck the observer; and with it was to be noticed immediately the curious shade on either cheek that flushed to a warm redness when she was animated, and, flushing sharply within its limitations, sharply threw into relief the transparent fairness of her skin. Her head, small and most shapely, was poised with the light and perfect balance of a flower on its stem. Her features were small, proportioned as a sculptor would chisel the classic face—having the straight nose, the delicate nostrils, and the short upper lip of high beauty. Her eyes were well-opened, strangely dark for her fair colouring, well-lit, with the light and shade and softness of dew on a dark pansy when the sun first challenges the flowers at daybreak. Her abundant hair, soberly dressed in a soft plait that reached her waist, was of a dull gold that in some lights went to burnished brass. She was poised upon her feet with the flower-grace of her head upon her throat. She was of such a quality and an air that you might believe the very winds would divide to give her passage, afraid to touch and haply soil so rare a thing.

Percival in these days went beyond even his first wonder at her. He had never believed there could be such a beautiful thing, and at their meetings he was very shy—regarding her with an admiration that was very apparent in his manner. He, certainly, if not the winds, had in her presence a feeling of necessity to be gentle with so rare and strange a thing. He could class her nowhere except with Snow-White-and-Rose-Red; and to him that was her meetest class—belonging to a different race and to be indulged as an honoured guest should be; permitted to have caprices; expected to be strange.

She came occasionally to tea at the Old Manor. The boys would take her then for a walk in the grounds—sometimes further afield. Percival, never free from the wonder she caused in him, always had much concern for her on these occasions. He constantly inquired if they were not going too far for her; he would always propose they should turn back if they came to a muddy lane. It happened once that a lane desperate in mud could not be avoided. He showed her the drier path against the hedge, but this was so narrow as to require some balancing to keep it.

"You must hold my hand," he said.

To shake hands with her had always been a matter of some diffidence. Now he was to support her while she picked her way. He took her little gloved hand in his. It lay warmly within his grasp; and concerned lest he should hurt so delicate a thing, he let it rest in his palm, passing his fingers about her wrist where there was bone to feel.

"Tell me if I hurt you," he said. "I'm trying not to—and not to splash"—and he trod carefully, above his boot soles in the mire.

She told him: "You're not, thank you. These lanes are wretched. I hate them."

Much of her weight was on him. There was a perfume about her person, and it came to him pleasantly: he had never walked so close to her before. The soft plait of her hair was about her further shoulder, hanging down her breast. With her free hand she held her skirt raised and closely against her legs for fear of brambles in the hedge. Percival looked at her daintily-shod feet, picking their way, and he gave a funny little laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" she asked him.

"My boots—and yours. You must have funny little feet."

She half withdrew her hand.

"I think you are the rudest boy I have ever met," she said.

"Oh, I didn't mean to be rude," Percival declared.

She told him in her precise way: "You are rude, although you are nice in some ways. I think I have never known any one stare at me so frightfully as you stare. I have seen you often staring."

Percival gave for explanation: "If I stare, it's because I've never seen any one like you."

She gave the slightest toss of her chin.

He went on: "Do you know what I call you? I call you Snow-White-and-Rose-Red."

He saw the blush shades on her cheek very slightly darken. It sounded a pleasant thing to be called. But she said: "It sounds stupid; what is it?"

"From a fairy tale. Don't you know it?"

"I don't care about reading."

"What do you like doing best of all?"

"I think I like going for drives—and that;" she half slipped and added, "I simply hate this."

"I've got you perfectly safe," Percival assured her.

She said nothing to that, either of doubt or thanks; and they finished the lane in silence. But when dry ground was reached and she withdrew her hand, she thanked him prettily. With Rollo—who had no wonder of her and whom she saw more frequently—she was on easy terms; and now the three walked back to the Old Manor more companionably than was usual with them. When Dora left, she surprised Percival by thanking him again; she surprised him more by showing him a little mark on her hand he had held and playfully protesting his grasp had caused it. Thereafter when they met she had a smile for him.

He liked that.

She came to be very frequently in his mind, though why he did not know. Once he came to Aunt Maggie with a dream he had had of her. "The rummiest dream, Aunt Maggie. I dreamt I was chasing her, and chasing her, and calling her: 'Snow-White! Snow-White! Rose-Red! Rose-Red!' and every time I nearly caught her Rollo came up and caught hold of me, and away she went. And fancy! I fought Rollo! Aren't dreams absurd?"

Aunt Maggie put her hand to her forehead. "Was that the end, dear?"

"Why, the end was more absurd than ever. Although I tried, I couldn't hit Rollo—simply couldn't. He hurt me, but I couldn't do anything, and he threw me down and went off with Dora. Doesn't it show how ridiculous dreams are? Fancy dear old Rollo being stronger than me! Is your head hurting, Aunt Maggie?"

"Just a shoot of pain—it's gone now."

While he described his dream, and while she pictured it, one of those flutterings had run up violently in her brain. It passed, but left its influence. "Absurd!" she agreed. "If ever you did quarrel with him—"

Percival laughed. "I never could, in any case."

"Are you very fond of him, Percival?"

Rollo was returning to London that day. "I simply hate his going away," Percival said. "I wish to goodness he lived here always. He wishes it, too."

CHAPTER VII

BURDON HOUSE LEASED: THE OLD MANOR OCCUPIED

I

It happened that within a very short time of that wish it was granted. Burdon House in Mount Street was let; Burdon Old Manor was permanently occupied.

This began in a visit that Lady Burdon, very decidedly out of temper, paid to Mr. Pemberton at the office in Bedford Row. Relations between Lady Burdon and the little old lawyer had radically altered since that occasion of their first meeting at Miller's Field. Mr. Pemberton, who in these years had relinquished to his son all the business save the cherished Burdon affairs, had long been aware that the misgivings which had clouded his first happy impression of Lady Burdon had been the juster estimate of her character. He had perceived the dominance she exercised over her indulgent husband; he had accepted, after what protest he dared, that the management of the estate was in her hands. He had foreseen the fruits of the wilfulness of a woman thrown out of balance by the sudden acquisition of place and possessions; it was because these fruits were now being plucked that he preferred to keep the Burdon affairs in his own hands. He could not bear the thought of handing over to his son this honoured trust in shape that would cause a lifting of the eyebrows: "Father, I've been going through the Burdon papers. I say, they seem in a precious bad way ... I don't understand...."

He could not endure the thought of that.

On this day when Lady Burdon came angrily—and defiantly—to Bedford Row, the position was raised very acutely between them.

"I know—I know," Mr. Pemberton was saying. "But, Lady Burdon, you must perceive the possibility—nay, in the circumstances, the extreme probability—that though Lord Burdon countenances in the smallest particular all you find it necessary to spend—and on the property not to spend—he yet may not appreciate the state of affairs—the imperative necessity that a halt be called. I have written to him frequently. The replies come from you."

She parted her lips to speak, but he had already had sufficient taste of her mood to make him hasten with: "I know. I know. Lord Burdon has told us both that he hates business and that he likes to encourage you in the pleasure you find in it. That is admitted, Lady Burdon. We have no quarrel there. My point is—how far is Lord Burdon to be suffered to indulge his dislike? how long is he to be kept in ignorance? I think no longer. That is why I purpose making a call on him. I purpose it, again, because I believe Lord Burdon's influence—when he understands—may join with mine to move you, where mine alone causes you annoyance."

He indicated the papers that littered the table. "You see the position. I tell you again—I tell you with all the seriousness of which I am capable—that the crash is as near to you as I am near to you sitting here. I tell you that it is not to be averted unless for a period—a mere few years—Burdon House is given up. It will let immediately on a short lease. There, alone, will be more than relief—assistance. It will save you much that you now find necessary—there is the relief of the whole situation."

She broke out: "It would never have come to this but for the cost of this irrigation scheme on the Burdon property. That is your doing—yours and Mr. Maxwell's. I tell you again I was amazed—amazed when I heard of it."

"And I have reminded you, Lady Burdon, that when I approached you in the matter you desired not to be troubled with it. I had often and often urged it upon you. This time you said it was to be left entirely to our discretion—Maxwell's and mine."

"I shall repudiate the contract. The work is not begun. You can get out of it as best you can."

He said very quietly, "That is open to you—of course." He paused and she did not speak, and he went on. "You would have no case, I think. The authority is too clear. But I do not mind saying I would try to get out of the contract or—. Our firm could not be involved in a lawsuit against the house we have served these generations." He dropped his voice and said more to himself than to her: "No—no. Never that!" He looked up at her and assumed a cheerful note: "You have to think of your son, you know, Lady Burdon. What is he to come into? This irrigation scheme will be the making of the property—the land cries for it. If you can cut off the Burdon House establishment for a few years, young Mr. Rollo will have reason to bless you when in process of time he assumes the title. If you decide—"

She rose abruptly: "I must be going."

Mr. Pemberton hobbled after her down the stairs to attend her to her carriage. A bitter wind was blowing. The coachman was walking the horses up and down. The footman who waited in the doorway, rugs on arm, ran into the street and beckoned to him. Lady Burdon watched the carriage, tapping her foot on the ground and frowning impatiently. A large piece of pink paper came blowing down the pavement, somersaulting along in a ridiculous fashion—heels over head, heels over head, grotesquely like a performing tumbler.

"Cold!" said Mr. Pemberton, briskly, rubbing his hands together. "Very cold!"

She made no reply. She was much out of temper. She was considerably beset. She was stiffening with an angry determination against abandoning her life in town. She was freshly aroused against Mr. Pemberton for his devoted loyalty to her husband's house—he had stung her by the manner of his acceptance of her threat to repudiate the contract; and by his reference to Rollo—he had hit her there.

The tumbling paper—a newspaper contents bill she could see—flung itself flat a few yards from them, throwing out its upper corners as it came to rest, for all the world like an exhausted tumbler throwing out his arms. The carriage drew up.

With a foot on the step: "You need not call on Lord Burdon till I have written to you—to arrange a date," she said.

Mr. Pemberton replied: "I certainly will not. I will await your letter, Lady Burdon."

She settled herself in her seat, drawing her furs about her. He was certainly a doddering old figure as he stood there—shrunken in the face, bent in the body, his few white hairs tumbled in the wind.

"Your house is very dear to me, Lady Burdon," he went on. "You must believe I act only in your best interests—in what I believe to be—"

She nodded to the footman, turned towards her from the box, and the carriage began to move. The tumbler contents bill leapt up with an absurd scurry, somersaulted down to them, and flung itself flat with a ridiculous air of exhaustion.

"Tragedy in the House of Lords," she read idly, and drove away.

II

Lady Burdon drove straight home. She arrived to be apprised she was concerned in the "Tragedy in the House of Lords" that the tumbler bill had brought somersaulting down the street. As the carriage drew up, a maid hurried down the steps and gave her the news: "His lordship"—the girl was scared and breathless—"His lordship, my lady—taken ill in the House of Lords—fell out of his seat in a faint—brought him home in Lord Colwyn's carriage—carried him up-stairs, my lady—fainted or—a doctor is with him, my lady."

Lady Burdon wrestled with the confused sentences, staring at the girl, not moving. "Fainted or—"

She threw back the rug from about her lap and sprang from the carriage. A newsboy rushing down the street almost ran into her, and she had to stand aside to give him passage. Her eye caught the pink bill fluttering against him where he held it: "Tragedy in the House of Lords."

God! The tragedy was here. She ran swiftly up the steps and up the stairs. At the door of Lord Burdon's room terror leapt at her like a live thing so that she staggered back a step and could not turn the handle. "Fainted or—?" She caught her hand to her bosom, her poor heart beat so. She had a vision of him dead, being carried up the steps. There flashed with it a vision that showed him tired after lunch and her saying: "If you knew how elegant you look, lounging there! You ought to go to the House. You never go. You can sleep there;" and he saying, "Right-o, old girl."

Sleep there? Had she driven him to die there? Fainted or—?

She entered the room. A man wearing a frock-coat stood by the dressing-table. She stared, and stared beyond him to the bed. She put her hand to her throat and strangled out the word "Maurice!" The man turned to her and began to speak. She ran past him and flung herself beside the bed and took Lord Burdon's hand and pressed it to her face. She burst into a terrible sobbing, raining tears upon the hand she held. From the threshold she had seen the eyes open, the faint twist of a smile of greeting upon the white, pained face.

Alive! That was sufficient! For the moment, in the first agony of her distress, she required nothing more. Between the recovery from her first shock at the news, and the terror that had held her back when she reached his door, remorse, like bellows at the forge, quicked her every memory of him to burning irons within her. Happen what might, she was to be suffered to slake their torture.

She felt the hand she held move in her grasp. It was his signal of response to her sympathy. He said very weakly, in an attempt at the old tone: "Made an—awful ass—of—myself, old—girl." He groaned and breathed: "O God! Pain—pain!"

She would not speak to the doctor. She desired nothing but to be left there holding that hand, feeling it move for her and pressing it against her face that was buried upon it when it moved. She desired to be told nothing, to do nothing. This was between him and her—let them be left to it while yet they could be left! A procession of pictures was marching through her mind. In each she saw herself in a scene of her neglect of him or her impatience with him. She had the feeling that while she might hold that hand and feel it move, each picture would pass—atoned for, forgiven, erased. This was between him and her—let them be left to it while yet they could be left!

Movements, the opening and closing of the door, whispering voices, came to her. Some one touched her. She shook herself at the touch and crouched lower. This was between him and her!—for pity's sake!—if you have pity, let us be left to it while yet we can be left!

The movements continued. They seemed to be closing about her—impatiently waiting for her. They began to force themselves upon her attention so that her mind must leave its pictures and distinguish them. She crouched lower ... if you have pity! She heard stiff rustlings and fancied a nurse was in the room. She heard a heavier step and presently felt a touch that seemed to command obedience.

She raised her head—A nurse, the man she had first seen, another man—older. He pointed at the figure on the bed and motioned with his head towards the door. Maurice seemed to sleep. She rose with a little shuddering gasp and looked at them, twisting her hands together—if they had pity! ... what did they require of her?

The older man was bending over the bed, whispering with the younger. The nurse came to her, smiling gently, and nodded towards him: "Sir Mervyn Aston. He will speak to you outside. Will you not leave us just a moment? Quite all right."

She remembered the name. It was the specialist Maurice had sometimes consulted. She had not bothered much about it: but she remembered the name. Sir Mervyn looked towards her and moved across the room. She looked again at the bed. The nurse nodded brightly. She followed Sir Mervyn to the door.

"Down-stairs," he said, and trod heavily down before her. He was a great man and took the privilege of bad manners. In the library he turned to her: "Did you send for me?" She had not expected that. She had expected sympathy—at least information. She stared at him, momentarily surprised out of her grief. His face was stern; she believed his manner accused her.

"No," she said.

"You expected this?"

Expected it! Of what could he be thinking?

"I've told Lord Burdon repeatedly that this life—I've warned him again and again to get out of it. Hasn't he told you?"

Now she knew that he was accusing her. She never had cared to listen when Maurice told her he had been to Harley Street. She stood twisting her hands together, nervous before this brusque man.

"Hasn't he told you?"

"No."

He looked sharply at her. He was a great man and had learned to read between the lines that his fashionable patients presented him. "A pity," he said briefly. "This might have been averted for many years."

"Tell me"—she said, and could say no more: "tell me—"

His tone became a little kinder. "We must hope for the best, you know. There is always that. I will look in again at midnight. They are making him quite comfortable up-stairs."

He said a little more that she did not catch. Presently she realised that he had left her. "This might have been averted for many years!" She ran to a bureau and fumbled frantically for pen and paper. She was in a sudden panic to do one thing that she believed would soften that dreadful sentence if the worst came. She was in a panic to get it done before there might be a sound from above and a horrid running down the stairs. She found her writing materials. Pen in hand she listened, trembling violently. No sound! As quickly as she could write she scrawled to Mr. Pemberton: "I have decided. We are going to Burdon Old Manor at once. Make arrangements to let the house, please."

Whatever happened now, she had begun her share of the bargain she prayed to press on death. If death would spare him, she would devote her life to him!

As she was sealing the letter Rollo came in. He had been to a matinee with Mrs. Espart and Dora, at home for her holidays. Lady Burdon gave a little motherly cry at the sight of him and took him in her arms.

They went up-stairs together.

The doctor had gone. The nurse told her Lord Burdon was asleep; but when she went to her former position on her knees beside the bed and took his hand again, he opened his eyes and his eyes smiled at her; and then closed; he seemed desperately weary.

She did not cry now. There was this bargain to be forced on death; and, as with the letter, so now with her promises, she was in a panic to get them done, believing that if death—God, as she named it—might know all she offered to pay, he must accept the price and hold his hand.

She was not the first that has believed death—or heaven—is open to a deal.

Through the long evening she knelt there, Rollo with her. Thus and thus she promised—thus and thus would she do—thus and thus—thus and thus! Mostly she bargained, frantically reiterating. At intervals she would turn to protest—protesting that her sin was very light for so heavy a threat. What had she done? She had done no wrong. She had no flagrant faults—she was serenely good, as goodness is judged. She was devout—she was charitable. Only one little failing, heaven! She had desired to enjoy herself, and enjoying herself had neglected him. But he did not care for the things she liked. Indeed he did not! He was happiest when she was happy. Indeed he was! Yet she saw the error of her way. If he might be spared, heaven—thus and thus—thus and thus—thus and thus!

Physical weariness overcame her as she heaped her promises, leading her mind astray and tricking it into nightmare dreams whence she would struggle with trembling limbs. The dreams took gross or strange forms. She would be running down the street pursued by the tumbler contents-bill, somersaulting behind. It caught her and fell flat, flinging out its armlike corners, and she saw it was Maurice. She stooped to him, and it was the bill again, gone from her on the wind. She pursued it, and saw it take semblance of Maurice, and pursued it with stumbling feet and could not catch it.

She struggled from these horrors and found her mind again. She was intensely cold, she found. Sir Mervyn had come and was bending over her husband. Sir Mervyn nodded to her and sat down by the bed. She dared ask no questions. She crouched lower where she knelt. The night went on—Sir Mervyn still there. She prayed on—thus and thus! thus and thus! She was tricked into the nightmare dreams. She was with Rollo's friend, Percival, and running to Rollo, who seemed in distress. A woman stopped them. She recognised in her the girl who had come with that claim to be Lady Burdon years before. The girl caught Percival and held him and Percival held her. She struggled to be free, for Rollo was calling her wildly. His cries grew louder, louder, louder, and burst as a real cry suddenly upon her.

"Mother! Mother!"

She started up. Rollo was on his feet, bending towards his father.

"Lift! Lift!" Lord Burdon murmured.

Sir Mervyn raised him. She clutched his hand. He rallied upon the strength of life's last pulse and flutter, and smiled, and murmured, "Poor old girl!"

Then she saw death come; and she turned and threw her arms about her son.