"_How"s_ she different from anyone else?" he demanded. "Is she blind or lame or sumthin"?"
Robert turned on him with exasperation.
"Oh, go and play at trains!" he said. "A child like you can"t understand anything."
William retired with dignity to the window and listened, with interest unabated, to the rest of the conversation.
"Yes, but who is she, dear?" said their mother. "Robert, I can"t _think_ how you get these big holes in your heels!"
Robert ran his hands wildly through his hair.
"I"ve _told_ you who she is, Mother," he said. "I"ve been talking about her ever since I came into the room."
"Yes, I know, dear, but you haven"t mentioned her name or anything about her."
"Well," Robert spoke with an air of super-human patience, "she"s a Miss Cannon and she"s staying with the Clives and I met her out with Mrs.
Clive this morning and she introduced me and she"s the most beautiful girl I"ve ever seen and she----"
"Yes," said Mrs. Brown hastily, "you told me all that."
"Well," went on the infatuated Robert, "we must have her to tea. I know I can"t marry yet--not while I"m still at college--but I could get to know her. Not that I suppose she"d look at me. She"s miles above me--miles above anyone. She"s the most beautiful girl I"ve ever seen.
You can"t imagine her. You wouldn"t believe me if I described her. No one could describe her. She----"
Mrs. Brown interrupted him with haste.
"I"ll ask Mrs. Clive to bring her over one afternoon. I"ve no more of this blue wool, Robert. I wish you didn"t have your socks such different colours. I shall have to use mauve. It"s right on the heel; it won"t show."
Robert gave a gasp of horror.
"You _can"t_, Mother. How do you know it won"t show? And even if it didn"t show, the thought of it--! It"s--it"s a crisis of my life now I"ve met her. I can"t go about feeling ridiculous."
"I say," said William open-mouthed. "Are you spoony on her?"
"William, don"t use such vulgar expressions," said Mrs. Brown. "Robert just feels a friendly interest in her, don"t you, Robert?"
""A friendly interest"!" groaned Robert in despair. "No one ever _tries_ to understand what I feel. After all I"ve told you about her and that she"s the most beautiful girl I"ve ever seen and miles above me and above anyone and you think I feel a "friendly interest" in her.
It"s--it"s the one great pa.s.sion of my life! It"s----"
"Well," put in Mrs. Brown mildly, "I"ll ring up Mrs. Clive and ask if she"s doing anything to-morrow afternoon."
Robert"s tragic young face lit up, then he stood wrapt in thought, and a cloud of anxiety overcast it.
"Ellen can press the trousers of my brown suit to-night, can"t she? And, Mother, could you get me some socks and a tie before to-morrow? Blue, I think--a bright blue, you know, not too bright, but not so as you don"t notice them. I wish the laundry was a decent one. You know, a man"s collar ought to _shine_ when it"s new on. They never put a shine on to them. I"d better have some new ones for to-morrow. It"s so important, how one looks. She--people _judge_ you on how you look. They----"
Mrs. Brown laid her work aside.
"I"ll go and ring up Mrs. Clive now," she said.
When she returned, William had gone and Robert was standing by the window, his face pale with suspense, and a Napoleonic frown on his brow.
"Mrs. Clive can"t come," announced Mrs. Brown in her comfortable voice, "but Miss Cannon will come alone. It appears she"s met Ethel before. So you needn"t worry any more, dear."
Robert gave a sardonic laugh.
"_Worry!_" he said, "There"s plenty to worry about still. What about William?"
"Well, what about him?"
"Well, can"t he go away somewhere to-morrow? Things never go right when William"s there. You know they don"t."
"The poor boy must have tea with us, dear. He"ll be very good, I"m sure.
Ethel will be home then and she"ll help. I"ll tell William not to worry you. I"m sure he"ll be good."
William had received specific instructions. He was not to come into the house till the tea-bell rang, and he was to go out and play in the garden again directly after tea. He was perfectly willing to obey them.
He was thrilled by the thought of Robert in the role of the love-lorn hero. He took the situation quite seriously.
He was in the garden when the visitor came up the drive. He had been told not to obtrude himself upon her notice, so he crept up silently and peered at her through the rhododendron bushes. The proceeding also happened to suit his character of the moment, which was that of a Red Indian chief.
Miss Cannon was certainly pretty. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and dimples that came and went in her rosy cheeks. She was dressed in white and carried a parasol. She walked up the drive, looking neither to right nor left, till a slight movement in the bushes arrested her attention.
She turned quickly and saw a small boy"s face, smeared black with burnt cork and framed in hens" feathers tied on with tape. The dimples peeped out.
"Hail, O great chief!" she said.
William gazed at her open-mouthed. Such intelligence on the part of a grown-up was unusual.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HAIL, O GREAT CHIEF!" SHE SAID.]
"Chief Red Hand," he supplied with a fierce scowl.
She bowed low, brown eyes alight with merriment.
"And what death awaits the poor white face who has fallen defenceless into his hand?"
"You better come quiet to my wigwam an" see," said Red Hand darkly.
She threw a glance to the bend in the drive behind which lay the house and with a low laugh followed him through the bushes. From one point the drawing-room window could be seen, and there the anxious Robert stood, pale with anxiety, stiff and upright in his newly-creased trousers (well turned up to show the new blue socks), his soulful eyes fixed steadfastly on the bend in the drive round which the beloved should come. Every now and then his nervous hand wandered up to touch the new tie and gleaming new collar, which was rather too high and too tight for comfort, but which the shopkeeper had informed his hara.s.sed customer was the "latest and most correct shape."
Meanwhile the beloved had reached William"s "dug-out." William had made this himself of branches cut down from the trees and spent many happy hours in it with one or other of his friends.
"Here is the wigwam, Pale-face," he said in a sepulchral voice. "Stand here while I decide with Snake Face and the other chiefs what"s goin" to be done to you. There"s Snake Face an" the others," he added in his natural voice, pointing to a small cl.u.s.ter of shrubs.
Approaching these, he stood and talked fiercely and unintelligibly for a few minutes, turning his scowling corked face and pointing his finger at her every now and then, as, apparently, he described his capture.
Then he approached her again.
"That was Red Indian what I was talkin" then," he explained in his ordinary voice, then sinking it to its low, roaring note and scowling more ferociously than ever, "Snake Face says the Pale-face must be scalped and cooked and eat!"