CHAPTER V.
CECIL AND THE BOYS.
FOUR boys were seated round the break fast table. They ranged in age from fourteen to ten. One glance at their faces was sufficient to show that they belonged to the average healthy-minded, hearty, English schoolboy. A girl was pouring out coffee for the quartet. She was standing to her work. Her age might have been sixteen: in some respects she looked older, in some respects younger. She was a tall, slim girl, with a somewhat long face of a pale but clear olive. Her eyes were dark, large, and well cut; her brow was particularly noble. She had quantities of straight, thick, black hair, which was swept off her forehead and fastened in a thick knot at the nape of her neck. The girl's name was Cecil Ross. She was Molly Lavender's dearest friend, the one around whom Molly's warmest thoughts, hopes, and affections were centered. The boys were eating their breakfast with the voracious appetite of the British schoolboy. The eldest had a look of his sister.
"I say, Ceci," he exclaimed, "how white you are! You've been fagging last night; I know you have, and I call it a beastly shame."
"Oh, never mind me, Maurice," said Cecil; "I have to study, you know, and really you four do want such a lot of mending and making and seeing to generally, that if I don't sit up a little bit at night, I simply get no study at all. Jimmy, darling, is it necessary to put six lumps of sugar into that cup of coffee?"
"There's no sweetening in this sugar," said Jimmy, aged eleven; "I can't make it out. What ails it? I put ten lumps in last night, Ceci, when you were out, and the coffee only tasted like mud."
"Like treacle, you mean," said Maurice. "Don't you think it's a shame to waste good food? You're a greedy youngster, and I'll punch your head if you don't look out."
Jimmy bobbed his curly fair head, for Maurice had extended one strong young hand as he uttered his threat.
"It's time for us all to be off now," he said, rising from the table and shaking the crumbs from his Norfolk suit.