“Hullo! here’s a lark,” said Arthur, presently, when the arrival bell had just sounded, “here’s Marky—do you see him? I say! won’t he blush when Daisy goes and kisses him before all the fellows!”
“Look out,” said the baronet, “here comes the scrimmage.”
The train was steaming into the station, and as usual the boys all along the platform began to run; and woe betide those who either did not run too, or were not lucky enough to get a perch on the footboard.
Our young gentlemen were far too knowing to suffer disadvantage through neglect of one or another of these simple expedients.
“Here they are!” yelled Arthur, waving to his chum; “spotted them first shot! Go on, Simson, cut your sticks off this step; these are all my people in here. How are you? Dig’s here; we’ve got a cab. Fetch up some of our porters, Dig, I say.”
Amid such effusive greetings Mr and Mrs Herapath and Miss Daisy Herapath alighted and fell into the arms—or rather, civilly shook hands with their son.
“Hullo, Daisy! Marky’s here. There he comes. Here she is, Mr Railsford; here’s Daisy! I say, Daisy,” added he, in a confidential whisper, “you’d better not kiss him before all the fellows. Wait till you get up to our study.”
Railsford arrived before this piece of fraternal counsel was ended, and solved the difficulty by quietly shaking hands all round, and asking Mrs Herapath if she had had a comfortable journey.
Arthur had the mortification of seeing five out of his six cabs drive gaily off under his very nose with other fellows’ people inside; and his temper was also further ruffled when all his porters waited on him at the door of the sixth for their fee; however, he had the presence of mind to tell them to wait till he came back in the evening, and then, slamming the cab door, hopped up on the box beside the driver—no Grandcourt boy had ever been known to ride inside a four-wheeler with his people—and drove off.
It was a gay scene in the great quadrangle that summer morning—fathers, mothers, sisters, cousins, and aunts were all mixed up in one glorious crowd, with their boys mounting guard over them and introducing them right and left to all the other boys within call.