Boy of My Heart

by Marie Connor Leighton

He had had a fairly hard time during the term, though we did not know it until long afterwards. A secret society of slackers had tried to baulk his energy and blunt his ability by threatening him with ghastly penalties if he got to the top of his form. Five of them had met him one day on his way from his house to his class-room and had thrown him over a gate into a field. He had got up and dealt with them one after another, and after that the threatening letters with death heads and cross-bones drawn in blood had ceased to come and he had had peace.

The bodily strength of him had developed enormously in the three months, and yet, directly he had come home, the tender, irresistibly fascinating side of him had sprung to the fore again. The gracious boyish dignity and charm of him filled the whole atmosphere on those afternoons when wind and rain and sleet made the London that he loved a bad place to be out in, and in the comfortable study he made his small toy gramophone give out a sweeter music than I have ever heard from the large and expensive instrument that now holds the place of honour in the home.

"But I wonder why everything sounds so sad," Miss Torry asked suddenly one day. "It's always the same, whatever record he puts on. There's always a sound of heartbreak in it, even if it's a comic song."

"That's like his character and his eyes," I laughed. "All gaiety and joy in living, but with throbs of heartbreak underneath."

Then there were happier hours still when I was going out to dinner and he would superintend my dressing and be particular about the flowers I was going to wear, or throw himself across the foot of the bed and read me French books or old French plays while I brushed my hair.

"It's so lovely to get back to London and to you, Big Yeogh Wough. When I've done with school and Oxford, you'll let me live near you always, won't you?"

"You won't be able to live near me if you go in for the Indian Civil Service," I reminded him. "And that's more suited to you than anything else, you know."

"Then I shall try to be literary and not have anything to do with the Indian Civil Service," he declared, half angrily. "Oh, by the way, as soon as I get back to school I'm going to get rooms for you and father for our Speech Day. They've got to be secured early, or you mayn't get any. Sometimes people take them a year in advance."

That first Speech Day, when it did arrive, was a marvellous occasion. He had urged me in half a dozen letters to make great efforts in the direction of clothes, and most of all in the matter of a hat, and as soon as I arrived he anxiously inspected my outfit.