Thereafter, for a space of a week, there had fallen on the yard a hallowed time of peace very different from the period of oppression and irritable energy which had preceded it. Maudie attributed the change to the absence of the Monster-without-Manners who had departed quietly with the Four-legs there was all the fuss about.
True, both had now returned, but in chastened mood, the result perhaps of well-deserved affliction experienced in foreign lands.
This morning things were much as of old. The fan-tails puffed and pouted and sidled on the roofs. Across the Paddock Close came the sound of church-bells, and from the Lads' Barn the voices of the boys singing a hymn.
The Bible Class was in full swing.
All the lads were there but one. That one was Albert. He stood in lofty isolation in the door of the stable, a cigarette in his mouth, his arms folded and his face stiff with the self-consciousness that had obsessed him since his ride in the National. Jerry and Stanley, once the friends of Albert, and now his critics, swore that he never took that look off even when he went to bed.
"Wears it in his sleep," said Jerry, "same as his pidgearmours."
But the loftiest of us cannot live forever on the Heights of Make-Believe. And Albert, as he breathed the Spring, and remembered that no one was by to see, relaxed, became himself, and began to warble not unmelodiously—
"When the ruddy sun-shine
Beats the ruddy rain,
Then the ruddy sparrow
'Gins to chirp again."
Mr. Silver came out of the house.
Albert straightway resumed his air of a Roman Emperor turned stable-boy.