[CHAPTER X]
YOUNG GEORGE TAKES ADVICE
On a day early in his summer holidays Young George went over to Feltham Hall to lunch with his friend and schoolfellow, Jimmy Beckley. Mr. and Mrs. Beckley and their eldest daughter were away. "You don't mind putting up with the kids at lunch," said Jimmy. "We can shift them afterwards or make them useful if we want to play games. Ruth and Jane aren't bad at tennis, and I've trained them all to bowl to me at a net. We can have a little cricket practise if you like."
Jimmy himself had reached the ripe age of fifteen. He was the only son of his house. The kids to whom he referred were his sisters Ruth, Jane, Isabel, and Ellen, who ranged in age from sixteen to eleven, and whom he affected to rule with a rod of iron. They were rather subdued in manner, but more, perhaps, because their father, who had married late in life, was something of a martinet, and they spent their days in company with an accomplished and decisive French governess, than because they were in any particular dread of Jimmy's rod.
"Mademoiselle will want to jabber French at you," Jimmy warned his friend. "They're supposed to do it at lunch, and I don't mind it myself, because it's good training. But you can answer her in English if you like. She understands all right. She's not a bad sort, though apt to think she has some authority over me, which of course she hasn't. You'll make allowances for that. She's been here five years, and of course I was only a kid when she came."
"Oh, I'll make allowances all right," said Young George. "If she corrects your table manners, I'll pretend I don't understand."
Jimmy passed this by, as being beneath his dignity to reply to. "Lunch won't be for another half-hour," he said. "We might go and have a look at the gees. The governor bought a new pair of carriage horses the other day which I should like you to throw your eye over."
"Which one?" asked Young George. "I can throw better with the right."
"Funny ass!" said Jimmy. "I think the governor depends too much on the judgment of Kirby, the head coachman. He's a shooting man himself, and doesn't take the interest in his cattle that you or I would."