"Well, what about your going over alone? I could see you off at Liverpool, and they would meet you at New York."
But that would not do, either. Harry had counted so much on having his uncle with him and showing him all the interesting things in America that his uncle's defalcation took all the zest out of the trip for him. So he remained in England and helped Sir Giles win the by-election, which interested him very much.
Lady Fletcher was right when she prophesied that Sir Giles would become fond of Harry. He was just such a boy as Sir Giles would have given his Parliamentary career, his K. C. B., and his whole fortune to have for his own son. The two got on famously together. Sir Giles liked to have Harry with him during all his vacations, and visits during summer holidays—visits, that is, on which Harry could not be included—were almost completely given up, as far as Sir Giles was concerned. They spent blissful days with each other on the golf links, or fishing in a Scotch stream, or exploring the filthiest and most fascinating corners of some Continental town, while Aunt Miriam, gently satirical, though secretly delighted, went her own smart and fashionable way, joining them at intervals.
No one was prouder or more pleased than Harry when—a year or two after he came into the Rumbold property, curiously enough—Sir Giles was given a G. C. B. and a baronetcy by his grateful party; or when, in the Conservative landslide that followed the Boer War, he rose to real live ministerial rank, and had to go through a second election by his borough and became a "Right Honorable." The fly in the ointment was that he saw less of his uncle than formerly. The Fletchers moved from their smart but restricted quarters in Mayfair to an enormous place in Belgrave Square, "so as to be near the House," as Aunt Miriam plausibly but rather unconvincingly put it, and Sir Giles seemed to be always either at the House or the Colonial office—have we said that he became Secretary for the Colonies? However, Harry was treated as though he were a son of the house, and was given carte blanche in the matter of asking school friends to stay with him when he came home. This permission also applied to Rumbold Abbey, the estate in Herefordshire that formed the chief part of the aforementioned property. There was no abbey, but there was a late Stuart house of huge proportions; also parks and woods and streams that offered unlimited opportunities for the destruction of innocent fauna, of which Harry and a number of his contemporary Harrovians soon learned to take advantage.
On the whole, Harry led an extremely joyous and entertaining life during the days of his exile. At school he fared no less well than at home; he was never a leader among his fellows, but he was good enough at sports to win their respect and attractive enough in his personality to make many friends. The natural flexibility of his temperament enabled him to fit in fairly easily with the hard-and-fast ways of English school life. He accepted all its conventions and convictions, and never realized, as long as he remained in England, that they were in any way different from those of the schools of his own country. He soon got to dress and to talk like an Englishman, though he never went to extremes in what he loved to irritate his schoolfellows by calling the "English accent." While not exactly handsome, he became, as he reached man's estate, extremely agreeable to look upon. He had a clear pink complexion and dark hair, always a striking and pleasing combination, and he was tall and slim and moved with the stiff gracefulness that is the special characteristic of the British male aristocracy. In general, people liked him, and he liked other people.
His vacations, as has been said, were usually spent with Sir Giles either in the British Isles or on the Continent, but there was one Easter holiday—the second he spent in England—when he was, to quote a phrase of Aunt Miriam's, thrown on the parish. The Fletchers were booked to spend the holiday in a Mediterranean cruise on the yacht of a nautical duke, who was so nautical and so much of a duke that to be asked to cruise with him was not merely an Engagement; it was an Experience. In any case, there could be no question of taking Harry, and Lady Fletcher was in perplexity about what to do with him till Sir Giles suggested, "Why don't we send him to Mildred?" So to Mildred Harry went, and spent an important, if not a wildly exciting, month.
Mildred was Sir Giles' only sister, Lady Archibald Carson. She lived in a little house in the Surrey hills, and though the land that went with it was restricted, it was fertile and its mistress went in as heavily as her means would allow for herbaceous borders and rock gardens and Japanese effects. Her two children, both girls, lived there with her. Her husband, Lord Archibald, was also, in a sense, living with her, but the verdant domesticity of the Surrey hills had no charm for him and he spent practically all of his time in London and other busy haunts of men, or even more busy haunts of women. He was a younger son of a long line of marquises who for their combination of breeding and profligacy probably had no match in the British peerage. Within five years of his marriage he had with the greatest casualness in the world run through his own patrimony and all he could lay his hands on of his wife's. Having bullied and wheedled all that he could out of her he now consistently let her alone and depended for his income on what he could bully and wheedle out of his brother, the eleventh marquis, who was known as a greater rake than Lord Archibald merely because he had greater facilities for rakishness at his command.
Lady Archibald was a tall, light-haired, pale-eyed woman with a tired face and a gentle manner. She had no interests in life beyond her children and her garden, but she had a kind heart and welcomed Harry cordially on his arrival at the little house in Surrey. He had seen her once before at the Fletchers' in London, but he had never seen her children. It was, therefore, with a rather keen sense of curiosity that he walked through the house into the garden, where he was told that Beatrice and Jane were to be found. He saw them across the croquet lawn immediately, and he underwent a mild shock of disappointment on seeing, as he could, at a glance, that they were just as long of limb, just as straight of hair and just as angular in build as most English girls of their age.
The elder girl rose from her seat and sauntered slowly across the lawn, followed by her sister. She stared coolly at Harry as she walked toward him, but said nothing, even when she was quite near. He met her gaze with perfect self-possession, and suddenly realized that she was waiting to see if he would make the first move. He instantly determined not to do so, it being her place, after all, to speak first; so he stood still and stared calmly back at her for a few seconds, till finally the girl, with a sudden fleeting smile, held out her hand and greeted him.
"You're Harry Wimbourne, aren't you?" she said, cordially enough. "This is my sister Jane. We are very glad to see you; we've heard such a lot about you. Come over here and tell us about America."