Dr. Wentworth seemed sufficiently awe-inspiring to the outside world, but his family took a different view of him, and Pris at luncheon generally addressed her father as "Poor dear," or spoke of him as "That child."
Mrs. Wentworth was wont to declare to her intimates that no schoolmaster could possibly be endurable who was not well sat upon in the bosom of his family.
"Personally," she said, "I have the greatest admiration for my husband, and consider him quite an excellent sort of ordinary man; but being a headmaster, if I didn't make him positively skip off his pedestal his sense of proportion would die of inanition."
Certainly neither Miss Prudence nor Miss Patience Wentworth manifested the smallest awe of their parent; and Lallie was moved to take his side in several arguments that ensued during luncheon.
Prue was rosy and brown-eyed, with thick short hair that framed her round face deliciously. Pris was fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a face like a monthly rose. Punch's countenance resembled a full moon, and all three children were plump and healthy and absolutely good-tempered. In fact, the whole Wentworth family were rather roundabout, which perhaps accounted for their amiability. Lallie endeared herself immediately to Mrs. Wentworth by her extreme popularity with the children. Even the imperturbable Punch unbent so far as to say: "I like you. You may come and have dinner with us every day. You speak in such a funny voice."
CHAPTER V
Tony Bevan did not meet Lallie again that day until nearly dinner time. It is true that during the afternoon he beheld her afar off across the College field, sitting on a seat beside the Principal's wife and watching the pick-up. He noted moreover that behind her stood a little group of the younger masters, and that they appeared deeply interested in her remarks; while her attention to the game was close and enthusiastic. She was in good hands, and Tony was quite happy about her. He had a great many things to do and to see to, so he left the field with a contented mind.
Mrs. Wentworth had promised to keep her to tea, and after tea he had to give a private lesson to two of the University scholarship people, so that it was almost seven o'clock when he entered his own hall to be met by a sound of music, and stood still to listen.
It was unusual music: vibrating, pulsating, mysterious; rising and falling in waves of sound that billowed hither and thither like the mist on the heath, the strain now soft and seductive, now loud and menacing; again humming with the slumbrous, slow drone of honey-gathering bees on a sunny afternoon in high summer. It was music that above all suggested thyme-scented, wind-swept spaces, rock and river, and shady, solemn woods. It was the sound of Lallie's harp.
He remembered to have noticed the big case in the hall as he went out to College that morning. Who had taken it out and carried it into the drawing-room for her? he wondered. She certainly couldn't have done it herself, for it was very heavy.