CHAPTER VII
Dick Chambers
Since the afternoon when Gwen had stopped behind in Stedburgh to arrange about the broken china, and had been obliged to walk home, she had seen nothing more of Dick Chambers. She looked out for him every morning on the bus, but he was not there, and she was just wondering what had become of him when he turned up in the most unexpected quarter. It was the Saturday morning after the prize-giving. Saturday was a whole holiday, and therefore a blissful day, every moment of which was appreciated. Gwen was returning about ten o'clock from an errand she had been sent to do in the village, and as she opened the Parsonage gate she saw in the middle of the front walk a boyish figure that looked familiar.
"Hello! What are you doing here?" she exclaimed.
"Come on business of a rather particular character," grinned Dick. "Didn't you know your Father's coaching me?"
"He never said so!"
"He is, though. I'm to come three days a week, from nine to ten, and I've just made a start this morning. I say, he's a ripping chap!"
"I agree with you there," remarked Gwen. "But why aren't you going to school?"
"Thereby hangs a tale! I happened to do an idiotic thing one afternoon—fainted in the lab, and had to be picked up in the midst of fragments of glass that I'd smashed to smithereens. Then Dad got some wretched specialist to come down and see me, and the fellow said I must stop school for this term at any rate."