"I dare say you would be rather cross with me sometimes, at first," she admitted, "and think my writing queer and untidy; but I should soon fall into your ways, and my writing is at least legible. I have more of a business head than Hugh," she added, after a pause. "You see, I am not hampered by a love of drawing."
Mrs. Le Mesurier had acquainted her guest with Hugh's difficulties of temperament.
The girl awaited a decision breathlessly, but it was Helen who first spoke, the while Paul contemplated the little brown business head, with its wonderful, drooping hair, in silent and varied emotions.
"It would not do, Hazel," she said quietly. "Neither Paul nor myself would like it, nor think it wise."
Hazel glanced quickly at Paul, only to see him confirm her mother's words by a smiling shake of the head.
"Very well, motherling," she said resignedly, "and, after all, it would be selfish in me not to let Hugh have the trial," she added, more brightly.
Nevertheless, the girl looked down at the two small hands in her lap, and sighed.
CHAPTER V
The next day, Sunday, Hugh, Gerald, and Teddie, the two latter in high and unrelenting collars, well smoothed as to hair, attired in well-brushed clothes and boots of an almost supernatural polish—for Miles, the faithful, had personally attended their toilet—soberly and with elaborate care helped each the other over the boundary fence, intent upon returning, with prompt courtesy, the call their mother had received from Paul Charteris. The three wished to create a favourable impression upon their whilom friend, and a "decent get-up," to use Hugh's own words, was of the utmost importance for producing this desired result. Hugh, who had affected a low collar and loose tie, would have been well satisfied with himself were it not for the annoying circumstance that his new shoes pinched horribly, and that they squeaked, being somewhat low down in the scale of gentlemen's shoes, and bent on blatantly announcing the fact.
"Confound the things," he said angrily, trying various modes of locomotion, and finally adopting a mincing step of airy lightness, which seemed somewhat to pacify his fretful footgear, albeit he was pinched no whit less severely.