“Shan’t I see you again?” asked the boy in a husky whisper, as they reached his gate. “It’ll be awful when you’re gone.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” the schoolmaster said hastily. “I can’t make an arrangement now. Good-bye, my boy. God bless you!”
The boy’s wistful eyes were more than he could bear. The man turned hastily and walked away, nor once looked back at the watching figure by the gate.
Next morning he called upon Aunt Amabel about ten o’clock. The less conventional the hour, the more possible did he feel it might be to explain his errand. She was at home and would see him. The boy had evidently done his bidding. As he followed the maid from the drawing-room to the study, he prayed that some Pentecostal gift of tongues might be vouchsafed to him.
Aunt Amabel was seated at a large knee-hole table covered with papers. She rose as he came into the room and held out her hand. The business-like table, the litter of papers, was exactly what the schoolmaster had expected, but the lady was wholly unlike the lady of his dreams. Tall, well-dressed, good-looking, and by no means old, she made things harder for him by her welcome. “You are the gentleman who has been so good to Reginald? It is kind of you to call. I am most pleased to meet you. He is a somewhat unusual boy, is he not? We rather pride ourselves on his taste for old buildings, and things that do not generally appeal to boys.”
The schoolmaster mumbled some vague politeness and seated himself upon a chair which faced the knee-hole table. Aunt Amabel’s eyes were dark, like the boy’s, but they were bright and lively, and she turned them now upon her visitor with full inquiring gaze.
“I came,” the schoolmaster said bluntly, “to see you about your nephew. He is not well, and I think his state of health arises largely from the fact that he has no companions of his own age, nor suitable interests. Why don’t you send him to school?”
As he spoke he was perfectly conscious that this self-possessed young woman was misjudging him, and the knowledge made him even less diplomatic than usual.
“We have never considered him strong enough for school life. He is an unusual child of difficult temperament. He would be extremely unhappy at school.”
There was a superior finality in the lady’s tone that roused all the fighting element in the schoolmaster. “He could hardly be more unhappy than he is at present,” he said sharply. “I know that this must appear, as indeed it is, a piece of unwarrantable interference on my part, but, having become really interested in the boy, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to leave Oxford without warning you that if you persist in keeping your nephew away from the natural companionship, amusements, and employments of his age, he will wither away as surely as a plant withers when light and air are withheld from it. That boy will die.”