The old man started and frowned, for just then the door was once more opened in reply to a summons, and the gentleman who had troubled Polly entered the school, took off his hat politely to the mistress, replaced it, and then, apparently feeling that he had done wrong, took it off once more.
“I heard you had come to the school,” he said, “and I thought I would follow you.”
“You might have known, Cyril, that I should not be long,” said the Rector coldly. “Good-morning, Miss Portlock,” and without another word he went to the door, pausing to hold it open while the new-comer passed out, saluting the mistress as he did so; and then Sage Portlock was left to continue her task.
Part 1, Chapter V.
One of the Boys.
“Mr Mallow seemed displeased with Mr Cyril,” thought Sage Portlock, as she went on with her duties. “He must have done something to annoy his father.”
Her thoughts left the subject the next moment, as she casually glanced at the window, through which the sun was streaming, for it was one of those glorious days when the dying year seems to flicker up, as it were, into a hectic glow, and for the time being it seems as if summer has come again.
In the schoolroom there was the busy hum of some sixty girls, reading, repeating, answering questions, and keeping up that eternal whispering which it is so hard to check, and the sun’s rays as they streamed across the room made broad, bold bars full of dancing dust. Outside there was the pleasant country, and, in spite of herself, the thoughts of the young mistress strayed away a couple of miles to her home, where on such a day she knew that they would be busy gathering the late apples, those great, red-streaked fellows, which would be laid in the rack and covered with straw till Christmas. The great baking-pear tree, too, would be yielding its bushels of heavy hard fruit, and the big medlar tree down by the gate—she seemed to see it, as she thought—would be one blaze of orange and red and russet gold.