“That’s just my luck,” he murmured softly. “I never could stand cold meat.” But that was affectation.
At this moment a small stone struck the ground within a foot of where the unkempt bird was standing. He hopped away in an aggrieved fashion.
“I won’t fly away yet,” he said sulkily, “it would only make the man conceited. They’re always chucking stones, these fools of men, and they hardly ever hit anything. They like to think that we’re afraid of them, and I’m not the least bit afraid.”
Another stone missed by a sixteenth of an inch the bird’s tail-feathers, and Magnanimity with one scream of bad language flew upwards. When he got there, he found that his nervous and unkempt companion had come back again, and had been watching him all the time. Then the magnanimous fowl swore worse than ever. There was no doubt that the nervous one would have a pretty story to tell about that pretended appointment.
The young man, who had thrown the stones, sauntered slowly up and surveyed the dead beetle, taking it in his hand to examine it more closely. He knew something about beetles—he had collected them in his school-days—and he saw that this was a large one of its kind, a fine specimen. He slipped it into one of his coat pockets, and strolled slowly back again to the house. He had originally meant to go further, but he had changed his intention. He was comparing in his own mind his favourite Marjorie, a child not quite fifteen, with the finished and ordinary girl as turned out in large numbers for the purposes of suburban tennis. He was also wondering casually why there were any beetles in the world, and why he had once been so interested in them.
When he got back to the house he paused in the hall for a second, and then went slowly upstairs to a room at the top of the house, used as a schoolroom by Marjorie and her governess, Miss Dean.
Marjorie was seated at the table writing. She had a large French dictionary by her side. She was dressed in dark blue serge. Her long hair had become a little untidy in her struggle to be idiomatic. She had a pale, intelligent face. She looked up as the young man entered.
“I’m awfully glad you’ve come,” she said, smiling. “It was getting rather dull, being all alone. Did you have some good setts?”
“No, not particularly—didn’t play much. I talked, and made myself useful, and ate ices, and drank things most of the time. You can’t see like that.” He struck a match, and lit the gas, and then he seated himself at the piano. “Where’s Miss Dean?”
“Oh, she went away as usual at half-past five, and left me this stuff to do for to-morrow. I’m doing it now, because I am going to be down in the drawing-room to-night. Only three more days to the holidays!”