My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the school-house on a green height. The young enthusiast was dancing him into the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash out pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.
'There's the old school-clock! Just in time for the half-hour before dinner,' said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the master, his wife, the teachers, the boys. 'And she—as for her!' Calliani kissed finger up to the furthest skies: into which a self- respecting sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick enthusiastic gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.
The school-house faced the master's dwelling house, and these, with a block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks! Forth from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the hole of their nest from a charge of powder. Out they poured whizzing; and the frog he leaped, and pussy ran and doubled before the hounds, and hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball. Cracks at the ball anyhow, was the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.
'French day!' said Calliani, hearing their cries. Then he bellowed
'Matthew!—Giulio !'
A lusty inversion of the order of the names and an Oberland jodel returned his hail. The school retreating caught up the Alpine cry in the distance. Here were lungs! Here were sprites!
Lord Ormont bethought him of the name of the master. 'Mr. Matthew, I think you said, sir,' he was observing to Calliani, as the master came nearer; and Calliani replied: 'His Christian name. But if the boys are naughty boys, it is not the privilege. Mr. Weyburn.'
There was not any necessity to pronounce that name Calliani spoke it on the rush to his friend.
Lord Ormont and Weyburn advanced the steps to the meeting. Neither of them flinched in eye or limb.
At a corridor window of the dwelling-house a lady stood. Her colour was the last of a summer day over western seas; her thought: 'It has come!' Her mind was in her sight; her other powers were frozen.
The two men conversed. There was no gesture.