"Am I! I am very sorry."
But he did not look sorry; on the contrary, he looked highly amused; and he bent his head now and again to say a word of encouragement to the fair girl on his arm, touching the difficulties of their progress. On, he bore, to the sofa he had quitted, and ordered the three seniors he had left on it to move off. In school or out, they did not disobey him; and they moved off accordingly. He seated the two ladies and Lucy on it, and stood near the arm himself; never once more sitting down throughout the concert. But he stayed with them the whole of the time, talking as occasion offered.
But, oh! that false morning brightness! Before the concert was over, the rain was coming down with fury, pelting, as the college boys chose to phrase it, cats and dogs. Very few had given orders for their carriages to be there; and they could only wait in hopes they would come, or send messengers after them. What, perhaps, rendered it more inconvenient was, that the concert was over a full half-hour earlier than had been expected.
The impatient company began to congregate in the lower hall; its folding doors of egress and its large windows looking to the street. Some one had been considerate enough to have a fire lighted at the upper end; and most inviting it was, now the day had turned to damp. The head master, who had despatched one of the boys to order his close carriage to be brought immediately, gave the fire a vigorous poke, and turned round to look about him. He was a little man, with silver-rimmed spectacles.
Two causes were exciting some commotion in the minds of the lesser satellites of the grounds. The one was the presuming behaviour of those people with Lucy Arkell, and the unjustifiable folly of Travice; the other was the remarkable absence of the Dean of Westerbury and his family from the concert. It, the absence, was put down to the dean's having at the last moment refused to patronize it, in consequence of its growing unpopularity; and Mrs. St. John's absence was attributed to the same cause. People knew later that the dean and Mrs. Beauclerc had remained at home in consequence of the death of a relative; but that is of no consequence to us.
"The dean is given to veering round," remarked Mrs. Aultane in an under tone to the head master. "Those good-natured men generally are."
The master cleared his throat, as a substitute for a reply. It was not his place to speak against the dean. And, indeed, he had no cause. He walked to the window nearest him, and looked out at the carriages and flies as they came tardily up.
Travice Arkell seemed determined to offend. He was securing chairs for those ladies now near the fire; and Mrs. Lewis put her glass to her eye, and surveyed them from head to foot. Her wild brother, Benjamin Carr, could not have done it more insolently.
"Who is that lady, Arkell?" demanded the master, of Travice, when he got the opportunity.
"It is a Mrs. James, sir."