"And yet it is my duty to go," thought poor Waveney. "We are growing poorer every day, and it will be years before Noel can earn much. I am afraid the schools are falling off a little. Oh, yes; there is no doubt about it, and I must go;" and Waveney shed a few tears, and then, chilled and depressed, she got into bed; and Mollie turned over in her sleep and threw out her warm young arms.
"It was delicious," she murmured, drowsily; "and oh, Wave, why are you so cold, darling? What have you been doing?" But Waveney only shivered a little and kissed her.
The next morning both the girls rose in good time to prepare the early breakfast. Noel always left home at half past eight—long ago an unknown friend of Mr. Ward's had offered to pay his son's school fees, and, acting on advice, he had sent the boy to St. Paul's. He was a clever lad, and in favour with all his masters; he liked work and never shirked it. But his pet passion was football; he was fond of enlarging on his triumphs, and gloried in the kicks he received. It was understood in the family circle that he was to get a scholarship and go to Oxford; and of course a fellowship would follow.
"'The veiled Prophet' will expect it, my dear," Mollie would say, at intervals, when she was afraid he was becoming slack; for under this figure of speech they always spoke of their unknown benefactor. The whole thing was a mystery. The solicitor who wrote to Mr. Ward only mentioned his client vaguely—"an old friend of Mr. Ward's is desirous of doing him this service;" and in succeeding letters, "My client has desired me to send you this cheque;" and so on.
The girls and Noel, who were dying with curiosity, often begged their father to go to Lincoln's Inn and see Mr. Duncan—the firm of Duncan & Son was a good old-fashioned firm; but Mr. Ward always declined to do this. If his old friend did not choose to divulge himself, he had some good reason for his reticence and it would be ungrateful and bad form to force his hand.
"He is a good soul, you may depend on that," was all they could get him to say; but in reality he secretly puzzled over it. "It must be some friend of Dorothy's," he would say to himself. "There was that old lover of hers, who went out to the Bahamas and made his pile—he married, but he never had any children; I do not mention his name to the youngsters—better not, I think; but I have a notion it is Carstairs; he was a melancholy, Quixotic sort of chap, and he was desperately gone on Dorothy."
"Dad's a bit stiff about the Prophet," Noel once said to his sisters, "but if I am in luck's way and get a scholarship, I shall just go up to Lincoln's Inn myself and interview the old buffer;" and this seemed so venturesome and terrifying a project that Mollie gasped, and said, "Oh, no, not really, Noel!" and Waveney opened her eyes a little widely.
"You bet I do," returned Noel, cocking his chin in a lordly way. "I shall just march in as cool as a cucumber, and as bold as brass. 'I have come to thank my unknown benefactor, sir,' I would say with my finest air, 'for the good education I have received. I have the satisfaction of telling you that I have gained a scholarship—eighty pounds a year—and that, with the kind permission—of—of my occult and mysterious friend, I wish to matriculate at Balliol. As I have now attained the age of manhood, is it too much to ask the name of my venerable benefactor?'"
"Oh, Wave, is he not ridiculous?" laughed Mollie; but Waveney looked at her young brother rather gravely.
"Don't, Noel, dear; father would not like it." But Noel only shrugged his shoulders at this. He had his own opinions about things, and when he made up his mind it was very difficult to move him. Never were father and son more unlike; and yet they were the best of friends.