Felicia, although at first much comforted by Cecil’s account of Rodney, longed after him as only widowed woman can long for her son; but she had promised her brother that she would not attempt to see the boy for three months lest it should unsettle him, and it only wanted three weeks of the stipulated time.
Rodney had not seen Cecil for a fortnight; he was out of town, but this Rodney did not know. It was Saturday, and a smell of onion curry pervaded the boarding-house, the Square garden looked hopelessly uninviting, and he felt that he could endure neither the one nor the other a moment longer. So he hied him to Pall Mall to see if he could catch a glimpse of his friend. A conspicuously forlorn little figure, he strolled slowly past the many clubs, when a man coming hastily down some steps stared hard at Rodney, and, fixing his eyeglasses more firmly on his nose, turned and walked swiftly after him.
“Felcourt! Felcourt! What are you doing here?” asked a sharp, nervous voice, and Rodney started violently as his house-master, “Fireworks Fenton,” caught him by the shoulder and shook him.
“You young ass! Why didn’t you write and tell me all about it?” said “Fireworks Fenton” an hour later, as he angrily thumped a tea-table in “Stewart’s” till the cups jumped off their saucers. “We all thought you’d gone to another school, and here have you missed a whole term, and lost flesh and muscle, and forgotten everything you ever knew. I’ve no patience with you; it’s preposterous, and must be put an end to at once! Give me your uncle’s address and your mother’s——” and “Fireworks” glared at Rodney through his eyeglasses, and Rodney sat swallowing uncomfortable things in his throat, while his heart felt lighter than it had been for many a long week. It was so good to be bullied in that particular fashion once more. Now he dared to look forward. He didn’t in the least know how it was to be managed, but his old master had told him he was to come back to school next term, and he always got his own way even with the Head himself. “Fireworks” was not afraid of twenty Uncle Henries—“Worthy but mistaken, worthy but mistaken,” he had muttered more than once during his late pupil’s explanations. Rodney went with him to Paddington to see him off, and it was only as the train steamed out of the station that “Fireworks Fenton” recollected that he had omitted the special business he had come up to town to do. But he only frowned and muttered: “That ridiculous little Felcourt put it out of my head, but I’m glad I found him—glad I found him. What fools these dear women are! What fools! What fools!” and whenever he turned over a sheet of newspaper (of which he didn’t read a line), he frowned again, exclaiming: “What fools!”
The particular fool Mr. Fenton had in his mind found two letters beside her plate on the following Tuesday morning. She knew both the handwritings, and gave a little sigh as she opened that from Rodney’s house-master: it would be to ask how Rodney was getting on: he had always been fond of the boy, and she had told him nothing.
“You will, I hope, acquit me of frivolous interference,” ran the letter, “in matters that do not concern me, when I tell you that I have seen Rodney and heard from him of the very great change it has been necessary to make in his life. I greatly wish that I had known sooner your reasons for taking him away from school, as I think one of the chief obstacles could have been, and still can be, easily removed. Dear Mrs. Felcourt, it is with considerable diffidence that I venture to ask you to do me a great favor, namely, to allow me to undertake Rodney’s education; my one stipulation being that he should come back to my house. You know that where there are twenty to thirty boys, one more or less makes but little difference, and in becoming responsible for the school fees, I am doing no more than my headmaster did for me. My mother was left a widow with five children and very little of this world’s gear. I am fully aware how much I shall be the gainer if you allow me to have Rodney, for, young as he is, he had a distinct influence upon that mysterious and fluctuating commodity, the ‘tone of the house,’ and I have not the slightest doubt that he will be able to make his own way by aid of scholarships, ultimately earning his own living nearly as soon as if he had remained in business.
“Forgive me where I have expressed myself clumsily, and believe me,
“Faithfully yours,
“Reginald Fenton.”
It was a long time before Felicia took up the other letter, which was from Cecil Connop, and of this one sentence stood out in letters of fire to the exclusion of everything else: