'Oh—nothing!' I muttered.
'Come, out with it, Jack!'
'There is you,' I said; and he leaned forward, resting a hand on my knee.
'Quite right,' he answered. 'I want you to feel you have me. Understand, Jack?'
'Yes,' I cried, and suddenly I seemed to realise what a bad thing it would be if I had not Captain Knowlton to depend upon.
The next day I returned to Ascot House, naturally disappointed at the prospect of spending the holiday at school. The other fellows all went home at the end of March, and about a week later I was surprised when Elsie Windlesham, the eldest of the five girls, told me that Captain Knowlton was waiting in the drawing-room. But my satisfaction faded when he explained that he was going abroad for some months, and that he had come to say good-bye. 'The fact is I have not been up to the mark,' he continued, 'so I have bought a small steam yacht.'
'What is her name?' I interrupted.
'The Seagull—a jolly little craft, and I hope to make a voyage round the world in her. I shall get back again before the summer holidays, and then we will have a good time together. I have had a chat with Mr. Windlesham,' said Captain Knowlton, 'and told him to keep you well supplied with pocket-money and so forth. You will be a good chap,' he added, 'and work hard for Sandhurst.'
As he would probably be absent on my fifteenth birthday, he had brought a silver watch and chain, which certainly went some way towards consoling me for his departure. So I said good-bye to Captain Knowlton, little dreaming of what was destined to occur to both of us in the near future.
For now events began to happen quickly one on the top of another, and it was less than a fortnight after Captain Knowlton's departure that Elsie told me, as a great secret, that her father had been offered a lucrative living in the north of England.