A boy of twelve, who knew only the very first principles of Latin (Mr. Babington was number three, the other two having proved unsatisfactory to their employer-pupil), and knew the multiplication table only up to "eight-times," disturbed his tidy little mind. There was, moreover, a youth in Sydenham who clamoured for Mr. Babington, and who was after that much-tried young Oxonian's heart. But Mr. Babington stayed on, for—there was Brigit, and in the evenings the tutor locked his door, smoked asthma cigarettes, and wrote sonnets by the yard to the Enchantress.
Tommy, of course, had at once perceived the first shoots of the hapless young man's baby passion as it sprang up in his heart—which did not make it easier to bear, but still Mr. Babington stayed on.
"He'll never go, Bick," complained Tommy that afternoon, after his remarks on Kingsmead. "I even tried smoking the other day, but he had a handkerchief of yours that you left on the hall table, and was so bucked that he barely noticed my iniquity. He is a poisonous person!"
"Yes, I certainly preferred Mr. Catt—but you didn't like him either."
"How could anyone like a fellow named Catt? I nearly choked every time I had to speak to him, and so did the Master." It was thus that the boy designated and addressed Joyselle. "He used to call him Minet. I have learned that rotten old multiplication-table, however, and Latin is easy. I do wish," he went on, gnawing at an ancient bit of almond-rock that he had acquired at the village sweetstuff shop at home, "that mother had had me well whacked when I was a kid. It would have saved me no end of trouble now."
Brigit laughed as she dabbed some cherry-coloured grease on her pointed nails. "Poor old Tommy!"
The almond-rock was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone wrong with Carron?"
She started. "I—why do you ask?"
"Because I think he looks very ill. Saw him yesterday as I went out, and hardly knew him."
"Perhaps he's had influenza," she suggested.