Louie thought this Mr. Mackie more than funny; in her inexperience of the type she could never believe he was quite true. For Mr. Mackie sang songs, imitated music-hall artistes, could "gag" for a whole day on end, and never forget for a moment the immense success he was. He fascinated Louie. "Ladies and bipeds in trousers!" he would begin, with rapid gestures and still more rapid speech, "before the applause I am waiting for has had time to subside—good word, subside—(thank you, Cuthbert, you can take the bouquet round to the stage-door)—as I was saying when Fitzclarence interrupted me, ladies and tripeheads in blouses, whoa, backpedal, never mind—as I was saying, I will now endeavour to give you my celebrated imitation of Roderigo the gasfitter at one o'clock on a Saturday with the thirty bob in his pocket and Hildegarde Ann his wife licking the paint of the lamp-post at the corner to squench her thirst—heu, her thirst!... Chord on, please, titillate the catgut, Professor, and take firm hold of his hand, girls——"
Then, while the eyes of Lord Moone's niece would grow bigger and bigger, would follow the performance.
"Isn't he funny!" Kitty would giggle, faint with laughing; "oh, give us some more, Mr. Mackie!"
And Kitty, like Saint Paul, died daily at yet another trick of Mr. Mackie's—the putting of his handkerchief to his nose, and the drawing of it slowly downwards to the accompaniment of a piercing whistle.
But Louie was only moderately amused by young Merridew. Mr. Mackie had his own perfection; but vulgarity with a tennis-lawn! "Good gracious, no," said Louie.
She had entered the School as a day student; but within a week she had put her name down for the evening classes also. Even then she had the evenings of Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and the whole of Sunday quite unamusingly on her hands. She did not want time on her hands. As much Mr. Mackie as you pleased, but no time on her hands. So she joined the classes that met on the evenings of Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
On her very first evening she saw a student whom she had not seen before.
She had taken a text-book on Elementary Book-keeping from one of the shelves of the E of books in which she had had her first talk with Mr. Weston (who, by the way, had said that he would like to see her for a few minutes before she left that evening), and finding a chair within the recess, had sat down where she was to read it. She had not looked up when somebody had passed the mouth of her little compartment and entered the next one. She had heard a book taken down from a shelf behind her, and, after some minutes, put back again; and had she not chanced to straighten her back at that moment she would probably not have seen the man repass. She had no time to notice more than that he was very big and not very well dressed. She went on with her reading, wondering, in the intervals of her slack attention to her book, what Mr. Weston wanted with her.
She saw the big man again at the close of the class. This time he was standing at the head of the stairs, waiting for young Merridew. He really was immensely big, so big that a too prolonged first look at him seemed unpleasantly like impertinent curiosity. Indeed, he seemed already to feel her eyes upon him, for he moved as if to look back at her in turn; but young Merridew came up at that moment and they went out together. The big man's head and shoulders were to be seen beyond the handrail for quite an appreciable moment of time after young Merridew's had disappeared. But she had been wrong in thinking that he wore a shabby suit. His suit might be shabby also, but it could not be seen. He wore, and had apparently worn in class also, a tawny old ulster of yellow and black check. In spite of its age it seemed somehow a better garment than did the more expensive clothes of his companion. He did not, however, strike her as very amusing.
She turned away to seek the Secretary Bird—Mr. Weston.