“What a prize for some lucky beggar with a big title and empty pockets!” reflected the male relative, who happened to be a brother, and could therefore contemplate dispassionately. “Thirty—and looks three-and-twenty en plein jour, without a pink-lined sunshade.” Aloud he said: “So you are to entertain Valcourt—Tuesday, I think you said?”
“Thursday. It would be dear of you to come and help me,” murmured Mrs. Mussard plaintively.
“It would afford me delight to do so,” returned the male relative unblushingly, “had I not unfortunately an engagement to see a man about a fishing-tour in Norway.”
“Tiresome! I know so little about modern schoolboys!” murmured Mrs. Mussard.
“The less you know about ’em, my dear Vivienne, the better.”
“Having been a boy yourself,” the speaker’s sister responded, with gentle acerbity, “you are naturally prejudiced. But, going by Geraldine’s account, Valcourt is not the ordinary kind of boy at all. Indeed, I have promised her to take him in hand, and impart a few viva voce lessons in savoir faire and worldly wisdom.”
“Have you? By Jove, Vivie, you’ve taken something upon yourself! ‘Angels rush in where demons fear to tread....’ I’m mulling the quotation, but in its perfect state it isn’t complimentary. May Valcourt profit by your instructions on Thursday!”
Thursday came, and with it Valcourt. He was pleasing to view; a clean-limbed, broad-shouldered, straight-featured, pink-and-white specimen of the well-bred English youth of sixteen, with fair hair brushed into a silky sweep above a wide, ingenuous brow; sleepy gray-green eyes, with yellow and blue reflections in them, reminding the beholder of tourmaline; well-kept hands, pleasing manners, and a wide, innocent grin of the cherubic-angelic kind, never more in evidence than when Valcourt was engaged in some pursuit neither angelic nor cherubic. Mrs. Mussard, at first sight, was conscious of a brief maternal inclination to kiss him. Geraldine’s boy was, she said to herself, “a perfect duck!” She subdued the osculatory impulse, shook hands with the boy cordially, and hoped the dentist had not hurt him.
“No, thanks awfully,” said Valcourt, with his cherubic grin. The teeth revealed were exceedingly white and regular.
“But you had gas, of course?” proceeded his hostess.