'And it wasn't the middle of the night either, Ross, it was four o'clock in the morning.'
And he agreed that it was quite different.
When daddy came the Mistress regretted that I would have to be expelled, but she trusted that a father's care and watchful eye were all I needed. She hoped and believed I had no vice.
I cried some more against father's sleeve then, because Ross had said once that people were only expelled for really rotten things,—
'It was the bluebells, daddy.'
'Of course it was, darling,' he said, 'but they're heaps bigger in Devonshire.'
'That child is on the road to ruin,' groaned my aunt.
Father said to Ross in the cab that crabbed age and youth never could live together, and that woman was enough to make an Evangelical parson turn Papist.
But something happened while I was at school that I can't forget. We were allowed occasionally to go to Evensong, and once in the dimness of the church I saw a man gazing at me. He looked like a soldier in the Indian army—not a bit handsome, but he had a certain rugged strength that made his face seem rather splendid. The keen, clear eyes were gray and stern, but softened as they looked at me. I felt as if I knew him. I have often thought since of that 'absent face that fixed me,' and I find myself comparing other men with him, and somehow, I can't explain it very well, I think I feel a little older since I saw him.
CHAPTER VII