“No, thank you.”
Really it was most difficult to make any headway with this boy. But the schoolmaster possessed to the full the necessary perseverance of his craft, so he continued his catechism:
“Do your parents live in Oxford?”
“I haven’t got any parents, they’re dead.”
“Dear me, how sad! With whom do you live, then?”
“Aunts.”
Written words can in nowise express the snappiness with which the boy ejaculated this monosyllable. The schoolmaster felt unaccountably chilled and worsted, and silence fell upon them once more.
The black cloud had passed over the Bodleian, the rain ceased, and the sun shone out again. The boy swung his feet off the window-seat, put on his cap and picked up his magazine, and without a word of farewell, strolled nonchalantly out of the gallery, leaving the schoolmaster to exclaim when he had finally vanished, “Well, of all the curmudgeony boys it has ever been my lot to meet, there goes the most curmudgeony!”
II
Yet he found it difficult to dismiss the ungracious youngster from his thoughts. Next afternoon he sought the gallery again, but there was no little figure curled up in the deep window-seat. The poet Cowley smiled serenely, the gallery was deserted, dignified, reposeful as of yore: with all its mellow charm of faded coloring, that even the luminous stillness of that April afternoon could not burnish into real brightness. But the usual sense of pleasant well-being, and ordered peace, failed to enwrap the soul of the schoolmaster. Even as the day before he had found the presence of the reading figure in the window irritating and incongruous, so to-day he found its absence singularly disturbing. He walked once round the gallery, sat a few minutes looking at the portrait of Cowley and wondering what mysterious charm it held for the queer child who loved it, and so into the dear familiar irregular streets, where he scanned every boy who passed, in the hope of coming across his small acquaintance of the day before. He went every day to the gallery, but no boy was there. He almost gave up hope of ever seeing him again, but he did not forget; and when, eight days after their first meeting, he mounted to the gallery and saw the little figure crouched in the window as before, with a gaily covered magazine open on his knees, the schoolmaster’s heart beat a little faster, and he hurried forward, exclaiming: “Where have you been all these days?”