“It’s you, remember,” she said, with whispered emphasis.
Frank’s cigarette, however, was still unlit, but he obligingly remedied this, and hurriedly blew out a cloud of smoke and silent laughter. Next moment the vicar entered. He paused for a second on the threshold, his nostrils surprised by this unusual aroma in the Room, but Frank instantly rose.
“How are you, Mr. Challoner?” he said. “I called at the vicarage, but every one was out. But hopes were held out to me that I might find some of you here, so I came. And behold me,” he added, rather felicitously, “a lay helper,” and he pointed to his half-written labels.
The vicar’s somewhat grim face relaxed. There was a neatness about Frank’s speech which his classical tastes approved.
“It is too kind of you, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. “Helen has impressed you into the service, I suppose. But—I am sure you will excuse me—would you mind finishing your cigarette outside? Our rules about smoking in the Room are stringent. You will excuse me.”
His eye glanced rather sternly, as he spoke, at Helen. This was one of the laxities he deplored in his children. She knew quite well that smoking was not allowed in the Room. The most infinitesimal moral courage on her part could have stopped it. And he himself knew how she would excuse herself, saying that she did not think it mattered in the morning when there was no one there. It was a rule of the place, however. He had made it; she knew it.
Frank instantly threw his cigarette out of the window.
“I am so sorry,” he said, “and I am afraid I never asked leave.”
“You have no idea what difficulties we have with even quite the small boys of the village,” continued Mr. Challoner. “Children of eight and nine think it manly to pull at an inch of bad tobacco. So I am sure you will not even mentally accuse me of faddiness. I gave up smoking myself entirely for that reason. You are too kind to help my daughter. You will lunch with us, of course.”
“Thanks, very much. I came over in the motor from Fareham, and Miss Helen had already been so good as to suggest——“