"Of going out hunting without asking his permission," Tony suggested mildly. "And since we have approached the subject of your general submissiveness, might I suggest that you fall in with one little regulation of mine, mentioned on the very first evening you came. Do you remember my asking you not on any account to use the boys' part of the house?"
"Well, neither I have, ever."
"What about the back staircase?"
Lallie flushed angrily and began indignantly, "It wasn't my--"; then suddenly she stopped and said with studied gentleness, "I'm sorry, Tony; you did forbid me, but I quite forgot that those stairs came under your ban."
Tony smiled at her.
"That's all right then. You'll remember in future. In some ways, Lallie, you are very like a boy."
"Good ways, I hope?" her voice was anxious.
"Some of them are quite good. Some of them--well, they are apt to get other people in trouble. See what was sent to me by the incensed master to whom the remarks refer," and Tony held out to her a large sheet of lined paper, closely written in her own neat little upright writing. The first few lines comprised a decorous statement to the effect that "Marlborough underrated the difficulty of managing a coalition. In his necessary absence abroad this difficult operation was in the hands of Godolphin, always a timid minister without any real political convictions," when suddenly the style of the Reverend J. Franck Bright lapsed into the wholly indefensible statement that "cross old Nick is a silly old Ass," and this was repeated line after line throughout nearly half a page.
Lallie gasped, then burst into uncontrollable laughter, exclaiming:
"It's Cripps's lines. He told me he had to do five hundred, and that no one ever looked at them, so I said I'd do three hundred for him as he wanted awfully to play fives that day. So I copied the dry old History Book till I was sick to death of the long words, and then in the middle I put that in just to cheer things up. What had I better do? Go and see Mr. Nichol, or what? He simply must not punish Cripps. He knew nothing whatever about it, poor boy. I sent him the lines in a neat bundle, and I don't suppose he ever looked at them."