“Well, can’t he go away somewhere to-morrow? Things never go right when William’s there. You know they don’t.”
“The poor boy must have tea with us, dear. He’ll be very good, I’m sure. Ethel will be home then and she’ll help. I’ll tell William not to worry you. I’m sure he’ll be good.”
William had received specific instructions. He was not to come into the house till the tea-bell rang, and he was to go out and play in the garden again directly after tea. He was perfectly willing to obey them. He was thrilled by the thought of Robert in the rôle of the love-lorn hero. He took the situation quite seriously.
He was in the garden when the visitor came up the drive. He had been told not to obtrude himself upon her notice, so he crept up silently and peered at her through the rhododendron bushes. The proceeding also happened to suit his character of the moment, which was that of a Red Indian chief.
Miss Cannon was certainly pretty. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and dimples that came and went in her rosy cheeks. She was dressed in white and carried a parasol. She walked up the drive, looking neither to right nor left, till a slight movement in the bushes arrested her attention. She turned quickly and saw a small boy’s face, smeared black with burnt cork and framed in hens’ feathers tied on with tape. The dimples peeped out.
“Hail, O great chief!” she said.
William gazed at her open-mouthed. Such intelligence on the part of a grown-up was unusual.
