Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

be cool.”

      “No, don’t!” protested Ralph. “You’ll never look half as nice afterwards. And besides, when girls do up their hair they always leave off being natural and get grown-up and horrid, and can’t talk sense to a fellow.”

      “My hair has nothing to do with being natural,” said Evereld, fanning herself with a big fern. “How could I help being natural with you, when we have been together all this long time? How I do wish I were a boy and might have gone in for the Indian Civil, too. By-the-by, Ralph, is that to-day’s paper? Is there any news about your exam?”

      “They sent the wrong paper,” said Ralph taking it up. “See, it’s last night’s Evening Standard instead of this morning’s; they have been taking a nap down at the bookstall. I wonder if there really is anything in at last. It seems hard lines to keep us on tenterhooks from the 1st June till August.”

      “I don’t believe you have worried about it. Your head was full of those private theatricals the moment the exam. was over. How well they went off! I never saw Sir Matthew so nice to you. He really did for once appreciate you.”

      “That was because other people praised me” said Ralph. “He would never have said one word of his own accord. You’ll never find him committing himself before he knows whether he will be swimming with the stream.”

      “Ralph, do you know I think you are growing rather hard. I hate to hear you say things like that about Sir Matthew. If Fraulein were here she would have a hundred instances of his kindness to tell us.”

      “Yes she would,” owned Ralph. “She has been our good angel all these years. Worse luck to that old professor who married her and left us to ourselves. Why, Evereld, just look at it in that way. What should you and I have been like if all this time we had only had the sort of indifferent cold charity which the Mactavishes have given us? Oh, I know there has been money spent on me: do you think I have ever been allowed to forget that for a moment? But Sir Matthew spoils with one hand the good he does with the other. Thank heaven, I shall soon be on my own hook. I wonder what life out in India will be like—and what the chances of getting any cricket are?”

      Evereld fell to talking of happy reminiscences of Simla, and they were planning all manner of impossible arrangements for the future, in which they fondly imagined their present brotherly and sisterly relations would be maintained, when Bridget suddenly appeared upon the scene.

      “Miss Evereld,” she exclaimed, “you’d best be coming in to change your frock, my dear. Sir Matthew has come down without any warning from London. He’s in the library, Mr. Ralph and they did tell me he was askin’ for you. Geraghty he just passed me the word that he thought Sir Matthew was troubled in his mind about some little matter.”

      Ralph flushed.

      “You see now,” he exclaimed, turning to Evereld, “if I haven’t gone and failed in that wretched exam! What on earth shall I do if I have?”

      “Why, you will go in for it again next year,” said Evereld philosophically. “But who says you have failed? It may be nothing to do with the exam. Besides, you know that your coach and Professor Rosenwald and Fraulein—I mean Frau Rosenwald—all thought you were safe to pass.”

      “I know I had worked hard,” said Ralph. “Well, let me go and hear the worst at once.”

      “Don’t despair so soon. As for me, I believe you have passed, and that it is only some business matter that’s worrying Sir Matthew. Good luck to you. Don’t stay long in the library. I shall be dressed in ten minutes.”

      She waved her hand gaily and ran upstairs, while Ralph, with a great dread hanging over him, went to the library.

      With other people he was invariably cheerful and talkative, but with Sir Matthew he was never his best self. To begin with, he was always ill at ease, and by a sort of fate he seemed destined to say and do exactly what would annoy his patron. If he was silent, Sir Matthew was in the habit of rating him for his dulness. If he laughed and talked, he was ordered not to make so much noise. If he hazarded an opinion he was sure to meet with a snub, and at all times and seasons he was hedged in by significant reminders that he was eating the bread of charity. It was well for him that he had seen comparatively little of the Mactavishes, thanks to his life at Winchester and to his friendship with Evereld and her governess; but he had seen enough to do him considerable harm and to plant seeds of pride, and hardness, and distrust of humanity in his heart.

      Sir Matthew was sitting at his bureau. He glanced up as the door opened, bestowed a curt nod upon Ralph and went on writing in silence.

      “They told me you were inquiring for me,” said Ralph nervously, noting at once the storm signals in Sir Matthew’s face.

      “I did send for you,” said the master of the house grimly, as he signed his name with two flourishing M’s, and methodically folded, directed and stamped his dispatch.

      Ralph, horribly chafed by the manner of his reception and by the suspense, turned to the window and took up a newspaper which was lying near it.

      “Put that down,” thundered Sir Matthew, as though he had been ordering a child of four years old.

      “Sir?” said Ralph, in angry astonishment.

      “Do you think I don’t understand your game,” said Sir Matthew. “You are pretending to look for news of your examination when all the time you perfectly well know that you have failed.”

      “Failed!” cried Ralph turning pale, and realising how little he had believed in failure when he had talked of the possibility with Evereld. “Who says I have failed? Where are the lists?”

      He snatched at the paper again, neither heeding Sir Matthew’s orders nor his scoffing laugh. Here was the list of the successful candidates, and with eager eyes he looked down it. The name of Denmead was not there.

      Sir Matthew silently watched his expression of bewildered despair, but though it would have appealed to some men it did not appeal to him.

      “Now that the newspaper corroborates what I told you, perhaps you believe my word,” he said sarcastically.

      “I beg your pardon,” said Ralph, “I did not mean to doubt you—but the shock———”

      “Now my good fellow, you may as well be silent, the less said about a shock the better; you know perfectly well that you never deserved to pass that examination. You had idled away your time over cricket and theatricals, and now you have to face the consequences.”

      “You are the first person to say that,” said Ralph, resentfully. “They all told me I had an excellent chance and was well prepared.”

      “The examiners, however, thought differently,” said Sir Matthew; “your work was miserable. I have this very day been making special inquiries into the matter, that I may not judge you unfairly. You have not only failed, but failed ignominiously. Don’t fidget about while I am talking to you; sit down and listen to me for I have much to say.”

      Ralph forced himself to obey in silence.

      “I am perfectly well aware,” resumed Sir Matthew, “that nowadays young men think nothing of failing, that they go in for an examination time after time with light hearts while their unfortunate fathers have to pay the piper. You were not in a position to behave in that fashion. And you would have shown, I think, a finer sense of honour if you had worked well.”

      “I did work,” said Ralph emphatically. “If you———”

      Sir Matthew raised his long hand and waved it downwards in a silencing manner that was peculiarly his own.

      “I say nothing,” he continued, in his cool, measured tone, “as to what I might have expected after the large sum I have thrown away on your schooling at Winchester; I say nothing as to the three months in Germany and the special coach I provided for you; I say nothing of the manner in which I took you at once into my own house when there