Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

of her, she caught sight of Ralph and crossing the room shook hands with him in an eager friendly way. The tide of general conversation rolled on, but the two children stood silently looking at each other for a minute or two. At last Evereld had a happy intuition.

      “Are you not hungry?” she said.

      “Yes, starving,” said Ralph, with a pathetic glance at the scones.

      “It’s no good,” said Evereld, noting the look. “We never have anything down here, but we’ll try and slip away quietly. No one really wants us you see. And I’ll beg Bridget to make us some hot buttered toast. She is the dearest old thing in the world.”

      “Does she live here?” said Ralph, as though he doubted whether anything superlatively good would be found beneath Sir Matthew’s roof.

      “She is my nurse,” said Evereld. “We came from India you know last February. Her husband was a soldier but he died, and then she came to be our servant. Look, some more callers are coming in, now is our time to slip out.”

      Ralph gladly followed the little girl as she glided dexterously from the room, and it was with a sense of mingled triumph and relief that they found themselves outside on the staircase.

      “Fraulein Ellerbeck and I have been talking all day about your coming,” said Evereld, as they toiled up to the top of the house. “The telegram only came at breakfast.”

      “They must all have thought it an awful bore to have me,” said Ralph, remembering Lady Mactavish’s preference for having her house to herself.

      “We schoolroom people didn’t think it a bore,” said Evereld, gaily. “You can’t think how dull it is to have no one to play with. I could hardly do my French this afternoon for wondering about you, and once when the master asked me something about the difference between connaître and savoir, I said, by mistake, ‘Ralph Denmead.’ It was dreadful! Everyone laughed.” She laughed herself at the remembrance. “But, you see, I had been thinking how well we should get to know each other.”

      A comforting sense of comradeship crept into Ralph’s sore heart; he forgot his troubles for a while as he looked at the merry face beside him. It was what he would have called an “awfully jolly” little face, with soft curves and a dainty little mouth and chin, a rounded forehead from which the hair was unfashionably thrown back, and a pair of clear blue eyes that made him think of speedwell blossoms.

      Evereld led him in triumph to the schoolroom to introduce him to her governess, and Miss Ellerbeck’s warm German greeting, so unlike the chilly reception he had met with in the drawing-room, at once set him at his ease. Bridget, too, accorded him a hearty welcome, and brought in enough toast even to satisfy a hungry schoolboy. She was a motherly person, with one of those rather melancholy dark faces of almost Spanish outline which one meets with among the Mayo peasants. But not all her wanderings or her troubles as a soldier’s wife and widow had robbed her of that delicious quaint humour which brightens many a desolate Irish cabin, and which brightened some parts of this great desolate London house.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      “I do not love thee, Dr. Fell,

      The reason why I cannot tell;

      But this alone I know full well,

      I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”

      Precisely why the house seemed to him so dreary Ralph would have found it hard to say. It did not usually strike people as anything but a model English home. Something had, however, given the boy a clue, and already he vaguely guessed, what no one else suspected, that there was a skeleton in the cupboard. Little enough had fallen from his father’s lips during those last days, yet Ralph had gathered an impression that in some way Sir Matthew was connected with that disastrous speculation which had ruined his father. He was far too young and ignorant to understand the matter, and even had he been sure that Mr. Marriott knew all the facts he could not have asked the old lawyer to explain things to him, for was not Sir Matthew his godfather? a godfather, moreover, who had generously undertaken to provide for him till he was grown up? He was ashamed of himself for not being able to feel more grateful, but that vague dislike and distrust which he had felt during their first talk at Whinhaven Rectory, only grew stronger each hour.

      When the last guest had departed, Sir Matthew was beset by eager questions.

      “Why did you adopt that horrid little schoolboy, papa?” said Janet, reproachfully. “You are far too generous.”

      “My dear, you forget; he is my godson, and I couldn’t leave him without a helping hand. His father entrusted him to me.”

      “They are all ready to sponge upon you, papa,” said Minnie. “A reputation for generosity is a terrible thing.”

      “For a man’s daughters, eh?” he said, laughingly. “Well, my dear, I don’t want you to be troubled in the least. The boy will be going to Winchester in September, and we shall only have him in the holidays. As for little Evereld, we shall not be keeping her after her first season unless I’m much mistaken.”

      “It’s true she is an heiress,” said Lady Mactavish, critically, “but I doubt if she will make a very stylish girl. And she’s far too conscientious to get on well in society.”

      “Well, well, we shall see,” said Sir Matthew, easily. “Already she has one fervent admirer. Bruce Wylie makes himself a perfect fool about the child.”

      “He’s old enough to be her father,” said Janet.

      “But she couldn’t have a better husband,” said Sir Matthew, in the voice that meant that no more was to be said. “Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to see poor Ewart’s daughter safely under the protection of a man like Wylie, before the heiress-hunters have had time to torment her.”

      “You remember that he dines with us this evening?” said Lady Mactavish.

      “Yes, to be sure; let me have a list of the guests. And, my dear, remind me that I promised Lady Mountpleasant to open the bazaar for the Decayed Gentlefolk’s Aid Society at the Albert Hall next month.”

      “We are no sooner off with one bazaar than we are on with another,” protested Minnie. “Bazaars seem to me the curse of the age.”

      “Blessings in disguise, my dear,” replied her father, with a smile. “The days of simple humdrum giving are over, and nowadays, with great wisdom, we kill two or more birds with one stone. To my mind, the bazaar is a most useful institution, and I should be sorry to see it abandoned.”

      “Ah, you would ruin yourself with giving, if I allowed you to do it,” said Lady Mactavish, glancing up at him with an air of pride and admiration which for the moment made her hard face beautiful.

      The words touched him, and as he left the room he stooped and kissed her forehead. Yet, on the way down to his library, an odd sarcastic smile played about his lips, and he thought to himself, “They have yet to learn that, had St. Paul been a man of the world, he would have added a postscript to his famous chapter, and said, ‘For charity is the best policy.’”

      In the meanwhile the schoolroom party were snugly ensconced in the window-seat overlooking St. James’s Park. Ralph had been cheered by the sight of a regiment of Horse Guards, and Miss Ellerbeck had been beguiled into telling them stories of the Franco-Prussian War and of her brother’s adventures during the campaign. By and bye, as the evening advanced, they were interrupted by the appearance of old Geraghty the butler.

      “Sir Matthew would like you to be in the drawing-room before dinner, Miss Evereld,” he said, “and I was to say there was no need for the young gentleman to come down. Maybe he’s tired after the journey,” concluded the Irishman, adding these polite words