Up in the highest form!’
‘Well, she is a prig, and a tell-tale-tit besides; only Stebbing said if she did, her junior would catch it.’
‘What a dreadful bully he must be!’ exclaimed Gillian.
I’ll tell you what,’ said Fergus, in a tone of profound admiration, ‘no one can hold a candle to him at batting! He snowballed all the Kennel choir into fits, and he can brosier old Tilly’s stall, and go on just the same.’
‘What a greedy boy!’ exclaimed Val.
‘Disgusting,’ added Gillian.
‘You’re girls,’ responded Fergus, lengthening the syllable with infinite contempt; but Valetta had spirit enough to reply, ‘Much better be a girl than rude and greedy.’
‘Exactly,’ said Gillian; ‘it is only little silly boys who think such things fine. Claude doesn’t, nor Harry, nor Japs.’
‘You know nothing about it,’ said Fergus.
‘Well, but you’ve never told me about school—how you are placed, and whom you are under.’
‘Oh! I’m in middle form, under Miss Edgar. Disgusting! It’s only the third form that go up to Smiler. She knows it is no use to try to take Stebbing and Burfield.’
‘And, Gill,’ added Val, ‘I’m in second class too, and I took three places for knowing where Teheran was, and got above Kitty Varley and a girl there two years older than I am, and her name is Maura.’
‘Maura, how very odd! I never heard of any one called Maura but one of the Whites,’ said Gillian. ‘What was her surname?’
This Valetta could not tell, and at the moment Mrs. Mount came up with intent to brush Miss Valetta’s hair, and to expedite the going to bed.
Gillian, not very happy about the revelations she had heard, went downstairs, and found her younger aunt alone, Miss Mohun having been summoned to a conference with one of her clients in the parish room. In her absence Gillian always felt more free and communicative, and she had soon told whatever she did not feel as a sort of confidence, including Valetta’s derivation of spooning, and when Miss Mohun returned it was repeated to her.
‘Yes,’ was her comment, ‘children’s play is a convenient cover to the present form of flirtation. No doubt Bee Varley and Mr. Marlowe believe themselves to have been most good-natured.’
‘Who is he, and will it come to anything?’ asked Aunt Ada, taking her sister’s information for granted.
‘Oh no, it is nothing. A civil service man, second cousin’s brother-in-law’s stepson. That’s quite enough in these days to justify fraternal romping.’
‘I thought Beatrice Varley a nice girl.’
‘So she is, my dear. It is only the spirit of the age, and, after all, this deponent saith not which was the dish and which was the spoon. Have the children made any other acquaintances, I wonder? And how did George Stebbing comport himself in the omnibus? I was sorry to see him there; I don’t trust that boy.’
‘I wonder they didn’t send him in solitary grandeur in the brougham,’ said Miss Ada.
Gillian held the history of the pea-shooting as a confidence, even though Aunt Jane seemed to have been able to see through the omnibus, so she contented herself with asking who George Stebbing was.
‘The son of the manager of the marble works; partner, I believe.’
‘Yes,’ said Aunt Ada. ‘the Co. means Stebbing primarily.’
‘Is he a gentleman?’
‘Well, as much as old Mr. White himself, I suppose. He is come up here—more’s the pity—to the aristocratic quarter, if you please,’ said Aunt Jane, smiling, ‘and if garden parties are not over, Mr. Stebbing may show you what they can be.’
‘That boy ought to be at a public school,’ said her sister. ‘I hope he doesn’t bully poor little Fergus.’
‘I don’t think he does,’ said Gillian. ‘Fergus seemed rather to admire him.’
‘I had rather hear of bullying than patronage in that quarter,’ said Miss Mohun. ‘But, Gillian, we must impress on the children that they are to go to no one’s house without express leave. That will avoid offence, and I should prefer their enjoying the society of even the Varleys in this house.’
Did Aunt Jane repent of her decision on the Thursday half-holiday granted to Mrs. Edgar’s pupils, when, in the midst of the working party round the dining-room table, in a pause of the reading, some one said, ‘What’s that!’—and a humming, accompanied by a drip, drop, drip, drop, became audible?
Up jumped Miss Mohun, and so did Gillian, half in consternation, half to shield the boy from her wrath. In a few moments they beheld a puddle on the mat at the bottom of the oak stairs, while a stream was descending somewhat as the water comes down at Lodore, while Fergus’s voice could be heard above—
‘Don’t, Varley! You see how it will act. The string of the humming-top moves the pump handle, and that spins. Oh!’
‘Master Fergus! Oh—h, you bad boy!’
The shriek was caused by the avenging furies who had rushed up the back stairs just as Miss Mohun had darted up the front, so as to behold, on the landing between the two, the boys, one spinning the top, the other working the pump which stood in its own trough of water, receiving a reckless supply from the tap in the passage. The maid’s scream of ‘What will your aunt say?’ was answered by her appearance, and rush to turn the cock.
‘Don’t, don’t, Aunt Jane,’ shouted Fergus; ‘I’ve almost done it! Perpetual motion.’ He seemed quite unconscious that the motion was kept up by his own hands, and even dismay could not turn him from being triumphant.
‘Oh! Miss Jane,’ cried Mrs. Mount, ‘if I had thought what they boys was after.’
‘Mop it up, Alice,’ said Aunt Jane to the younger girl. ‘No don’t come up, Ada; it is too wet for you. It is only a misdirected experiment in hydraulics.’
‘I told him not,’ said Clement Varley, thinking affairs serious.
‘Fergus, I am shocked at you,’ said Gillian sternly. ‘You are frightfully wet. You must be sent to bed.’
‘You must go and change,’ said Aunt Jane, preventing the howl about to break forth. ‘My dear boy, that tap must be let alone. We can’t have cataracts on the stairs.’
‘I didn’t mean it, Aunt Jane; I thought it was an invention,’ said Fergus.
‘I know; but another time come and ask me where to try your experiments. Go and take off those clothes; and you, Clement, you are soaking too. Run home at once.’
Gillian, much scandalised, broke out—
‘It is very naughty. At home, he would be sent to bed at once.’
‘I am not Mrs. Halfpenny, Gillian,’ said Aunt Jane coldly.
‘Jane has a soft spot for inventions, for Maurice’s sake,’ said her sister.
‘I can’t confound ingenuity and enterprise with wanton mischief, or crush it out for want of sympathy,’ said Miss Mohun. ‘Come, we must return to our needles.’
If Aunt Jane had gone into the state of wrath to be naturally expected, Gillian would have risen in arms on her brother’s behalf, and that would have been much pleasanter than the leniency which made her views of justice appear like unkindness.
This did not dispose her to be the better pleased at an entreaty from the two children to be allowed to join Mrs. Hablot’s class on Sunday. It appeared that they had asked Aunt Jane, and she had told them that their sister knew what their mother would like.
‘But I am sure she would not mind,’ said Valetta. ‘Only think, she has got a portfolio with pictures of everything all through the Bible!’
‘Yes,’