Jenny soon wearied of the drawing-room, even when freshened by Dr. Mount. She always found a stifling quality in Conster’s public rooms, with their misleading show of wealth, and escaped as early as she could to the old schoolroom at the back of the house, looking steeply up through firs at the wooded slope of Brede Eye.
This evening the room was nearly dark, for the firs shut out the dregs of twilight and the moon that looked over the hill. She could just see the outlines of the familiar furniture, the square table on which she and Gervase had scrawled abusive remarks in the intervals of their lessons, the rocking chair, where the ghost of Nurse sometimes still seemed to sit and sway, the bookcase full of children’s books—“Fifty-two Stories for Girls” and “Fifty-two Stories for Boys,” the “Girls of St. Wode’s” and “With Wallace at Bannockburn”—all those faded gilded rows which she still surreptitiously enjoyed.
Now she had an indefinite feeling that someone was in the room, but had scarcely realised it when a shape drew itself up against the window square, making her start and gasp.
“It’s only me,” said an apologetic voice.
“Gervase!”
She switched on the light and saw her brother standing by the table.
“When did you come?”
“Oh, twenty minutes ago. I heard you all gassing away in the drawing-room, so thought I’d come up here till you’d finished with Peter.”
“How sociable and brotherly of you! You might have come in and said how d’you do. You haven’t seen him for a year.”
“I thought I’d be an anti-climax—spoil the Warrior’s Return and all that. I’ll go down in a minute.”