“There’s a new one and he’s rather shy. They say he’s English. He and his father came last night. The boy’s name is Cecil; I heard his father speak to him at the table to-night. The father has a funny name; I can’t remember it. Mrs. Hayne says he is very distingué, and she’s sure he’s a lord in disguise, but I think he’s very thin and ugly. He has the deepest lines on each side of his mouth, and a big thin nose, and a droop at the corner of his eyes. He’s the stuck-uppest looking thing I ever saw. The boy is about twelve, I reckon, and looks as if he wasn’t afraid of anything but girls. He has the curliest hair and the loveliest complexion, and his eyes laugh. They’re hazel, and his hair is brown. He looks much nicer than any boy I ever saw.”
“He is the son of a gentleman—and English gentlemen are the only ones that can compare with Southerners, honey. If you make friends with him you may bring him up here.”
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Lee. Her mother had encouraged her to ignore boys, and disliked visitors of any kind.
“I feel sure he is going to be your next friend, and you are so lonely, honey, now that poor Miss Stainers is gone. So ask him up if you like. It makes me very sad to think that you have no playmates.”
Lee climbed up on her mother’s lap. Once in a great while she laid aside the dignity of her superior position in the family, and demanded a petting. Mrs. Tarleton held her close and shut her eyes, and strove to imagine that the child in her arms was five years younger, and that both were listening for a step which so often smote her memory with agonising distinctness.
CHAPTER IV
LEE sat limply on the edge of her cot wishing she had a husband to button her boots. Mrs. Tarleton had been very ill during the night, and her daughter’s brain and eyes were heavy. Lee had no desire for school, for anything but bed; but it was eight o’clock, examinations were approaching, and to school she must go. She glared resentfully at the long row of buttons, half inclined to wear her slippers, and finally compromised by fastening every third button. The rest of her toilette was accomplished with a like disregard for fashion. She was not pleased with her appearance and was disposed to regard life as a failure. At breakfast she received a severe reprimand from Mrs. Hayne, who informed her and the table inclusively that her hair looked as if it had been combed by a rake, and rebuttoned her frock there and then with no regard for the pride of eleven. Altogether, Lee, between her recent affliction, her tired head, and her wounded dignity, started for school in a very depressed frame of mind.
As she descended the long stair leading from the first floor of the boarding-house to the street she saw the English lad standing in the door. They had exchanged glances of curiosity and interest across the table, and once he had offered her radishes, with a lively blush. That morning she had decided that he must be very nice indeed, for he had turned scarlet during Mrs. Hayne’s scolding and had scowled quite fiercely at the autocrat.
He did not look up nor move until she asked him to let her pass; he was apparently absorbed in the loud voluntary of Market Street, his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his pockets, his feet well apart. When Lee spoke, he turned swiftly and grabbed at her school-bag.
“You’re tired,” he said, with so desperate an assumption of ease that he was brutally abrupt, and Lee jumped backward a foot.