"Look here, Dr. Burgess," he suggested. "Why shouldn't I take charge of him for a night and a day?"
Burgess eyed him thoughtfully.
"A night and a day are twenty-four hours," he said.
"We shall be nine to one," answered Dainton reassuringly.
"You have not seen him yet."
Burgess rose from his chair and rang the bell. A moment later the door opened, and O'Rane entered the library. He was a boy of medium height with black hair parted in the middle, after the American fashion, unusually large black eyes and bronzed face and hands. Though the black eyes sometimes lost their dreaminess and became charged with sudden passion, though the sunken cheeks and sharply outlined bones of the face gave him something of a starving animal's desperation, the reality was considerably less formidable than I had imagined from Burgess's description. In manner he was a curious mixture of the old and new. On being introduced, he drew himself up and clicked his heels, and in speaking he showed a tendency to gesticulate; then without warning his voice would take on a Western drawl, and unexpected transatlanticisms would crop up in his speech.
On learning Dainton's proposal he bowed and accepted with a guarded politeness. We made our way into Great Court, found Sonia and Sam, and set out for the "Raven." On reaching home I mentioned to Loring that we had a new boy requiring a certain amount of special consideration; we span a coin, and Loring took O'Rane for a fag, while Sam was allotted to me. The stranger within our gates said little that night or next morning, though all of us tried, one after another, to engage him in conversation. The ways of the house seemed unfamiliar to him, and he wandered round thoughtfully with his hands in his pockets, rather ostentatiously avoiding any advances.
The next evening, after an early dinner, the racing omnibus was brought round to the door. Tom Dainton, looking like a prize-fighter with his bony, red face and vast double-breasted overcoat, clambered on to the box-seat; Loring, recumbent in an arm-chair till the last possible moment, dragged his sleepy, long body upright and climbed, with a drowsy protest, to Tom's side; Sutcliffe, with his shock of red hair bared to the night and his spectacles gleaming in the light of the lamps, hurried the immaculate and aesthetic Draycott into place and scrambled up behind him. Sam, overcome with sudden timidity and a sense that the familiar was fading past recall, kissed his mother and mounted shyly, indicating a vacant seat for O'Rane. I stayed behind to check the luggage, unearth the coach-horn and wave good-bye, then leapt on the back step and gave the signal for departure.
As we started down the drive at a canter, our hosts stood silhouetted against the lights of the hall. Dainton removed one hand from the torn pocket of the old shooting-jacket and waved farewell; Mrs. Dainton bowed majestically; Sonia, bare-legged and sandalled, with a gold bracelet round one ankle and the face of a Sistine Madonna, raised both hands to her lips and blew a cloud of tempestuous kisses.
Loring turned encouragingly to Sam.