“He’s rather a good sort, the pater.” He took the rest of the pictures down and held them out. “Here’s some more if you care to see them.” Dick pretended to smother a yawn. “Thanks,” he said.
“I’m not boring you?” asked Trevor apologetically.
“No, indeed.” Dick was looking at the likeness of an elderly woman in a high lace cap. “Not your mother, is it?”
“No, that is my Aunt Grace; she lives in Manchester. I haven’t a picture of the mater here; we have only one, and the pater keeps that. She—she died when I was quite a youngster.”
“Oh,” said Dick softly. “I’m sorry. Mothers are—well, I wouldn’t want to lose mine, Nesbitt.”
“I fancy not. We—the pater and I—were awfully cut up when the mater died. That’s a cousin of mine; he’s at Rugby.”
The picture showed a stolid-looking boy with decidedly heavy features attired in flannels and leaning with studied carelessness on a cricket bat. It was typically English, Dick thought as he laid it aside. A photograph with “Maud” scrawled across the bottom in high angular characters showed a conscious-looking young lady of eighteen or nineteen years simpering from a latticed doorway. “That’s Cousin Maud,” explained Trevor; “she’s engaged to a lieutenant of engineers in South Africa; she’s a jolly nice girl.” When Dick had seen the last of the photographs Trevor rearranged them on the mantel, and while he was doing so there came a knock at the study door, followed by the entrance of a youth in a long ulster on which the snowflakes were melting.
“Hello, Earle, come in!” cried Dick, arising and shaking hands with the newcomer. “Where’s Carl?”
Stewart Earle, a slim, bright-faced boy of apparently fourteen years of age, shook the flakes from his coat and drew a note from his pocket.
“He couldn’t come over, Hope, so he asked me to bring this to you. I had to come over to the library. It’s snowing like all get out.”