"Well, I am glad!" he cried, striding across the room and shaking Hallin's hand by the way. "Miss Boyce! I thought none of your friends were ever going to get a sight of you again! Why, what—"
He drew back scanning her, a gay look of quizzing surprise on his fair boy's face.
"He expected me in cap and apron," said Marcella, laughing; "or means to pretend he did."
"I expected a sensation! And here you are, just as you were, only twice
as—I say, Hallin, doesn't she look well!"—this in a stage aside to
Hallin, while the speaker was drawing off his gloves, and still studying
Marcella.
"Well, I think she looks tired," said Hallin, with a little attempt at a smile, but turning away. Everybody felt a certain tension, a certain danger, even in the simplest words, and Miss Hallin's call to supper was very welcome.
The frugal meal went gaily. The chattering Christchurch boy brought to it a breath of happy, careless life, to which the three others—over-driven and over-pressed, all of them—responded with a kind of eagerness. Hallin especially delighted in him, and would have out all his budget—his peacock's pride at having been just put into the 'Varsity eleven, his cricket engagements for the summer, his rows with his dons, above all his lasting amazement that he should have just scraped through his Mods.
"I thought those Roman emperors would have done for me!" he declared, with a child's complacency. "Brutes! I couldn't remember them. I learnt them up and down, backwards and forwards—but it was no good; they nearly dished me!"
"Yet it comes back to me," said Hallin, slily, "that when a certain person was once asked to name the winner of the Derby in some obscure year, he began at the beginning, and gave us all of them, from first to last, without a hitch."
"The winner of the Derby!" said the lad, eagerly, bending forward with his hands on his knees; "why, I should rather think so! That isn't memory; that's knowledge!—Goodness! who's this?"
The last remark was addressed sotto voce to Marcella. Supper was just over, and the two guests, with Hallin, had returned to the window, while Miss Hallin, stoutly refusing their help, herself cleared the table and set all straight.