"The new boys will wait in here and the new girls will quietly follow Helen Hungerford down the passage to Miss Caroline's room. Nurses need not wait any longer."
Then a bell vibrated shrilly. There was a general scamper as the nurses and the nursemaids and the old boys and the old girls hurried from the room, leaving Michael and two other boys, both about two years older than himself, to survey each other with suspicion. The other boys finding Michael beneath the dignity of their notice spoke to each other, or rather the larger of the two, a long-bodied boy with a big head and vacant mouth, said to the other, a fidgety boy with a pink face, a frog-like smile and very tight knickerbockers:
"I say, what's your name?"
The pink-faced boy gulped "Edward Ernest Arnott."
"What is it then?" asked the long-bodied boy.
"Arnott is my surname. Edward and Ernest," he gulped again, "are my Christian names."
"Mine's Vernon Brown. I say, what's your father?"
"A solicitor," said Edward. "What's yours?"
"A cricket—I mean a critic," said Vernon.
"What's that?"
This seemed to upset the long-bodied boy, who replied:
"Coo! Don't you know what a cricket is? I mean critic. You must be a kid."
Michael thought this was the most extraordinary conversation he had ever heard. Not even Mrs. Frith and Annie could be so incomprehensible.
"I don't believe you know yourself," said the pink-faced boy, deepening to crimson.
"Don't I? I bet I do."
"I bet you don't."
"I know better than you anyway."
"So do I than you."
Michael would have found a conversation between two fox-terriers more intelligible. It ended abruptly, however, with the entrance of Miss Marrow, who waved them all to follow her to the severity of her own room. Edward Arnott and Vernon Brown were despatched upstairs to take their places in the class above the Kindergarten for which Michael was destined and whither he followed Miss Marrow, wondering at the size and ugliness of her. Miss Marrow's base was a black bell, on which was set a black cushion, above which was Miss Marrow's round beetroot-coloured face. Miss Caroline was like a green curtain through the folds of which seemed to have burst a red face like her sister's but thinner. Miss Caroline was pleasanter than Miss Marrow and never shouted, perhaps because she was never without a cold in the head.
Michael was handed over to the care of Miss Hewitt, the Kindergarten mistress, who was very kind and very jolly. Michael enjoyed the Kindergarten. There he learned to write pothooks and hangers and very soon to write proper letters. He learned to sew alternate red and blue lines of wool upon a piece of cardboard. He learned to weave bookmarkers with shining slips of chocolate and yellow paper, and to pleat chequered mats of the same material: these, when term was over, appeared at the prize-giving, beautifully enhanced with paper frills cut by the clever Miss Hewitt. He learned to paint texts and to keep his pencil-box tidy and to play the treble of a very unmelodious duet with Miss Hunt, in whose bony fingers his own fingers would from time to time get entangled. He tried the treble without the bass accompaniment at home on Stella, but she cried and seemed as Annie, who was in charge, said 'to regular shudder.' Altogether Kindergarten was a pleasure to Michael, and he found the days went by more quickly, though still far too slowly.
About a week before Christmas his mother came back, and Michael was happy. All the rooms that were only used when she was at home changed from bare beeswaxed deserts to places of perfect comfort, so rosy were the lamp-shades, so sweet was the smell of flowers and so soft and lovely were his mother's scattered belongings. Christmas Day brought presents—a box of stone bricks, a rocking-horse, a doll's house for Stella, boxes of soldiers, a wooden battleship, and books—Hans Andersen and Grimm and the Old French Fairy-tales. As for the stockings that year, it was amazing how much managed to get into one stocking and how deliciously heavy it felt, as it was unhooked from the end of the cot and plumped down upon the bed in the gaslight of Christmas morning. There was only one sadness that hung over the festivities—the thought that his mother would be going away in two days. Boxing Day arrived and there were ominous open trunks and the scattered contents of drawers. To-morrow she was going. It was dreadful to think of. Michael was allowed the bitter joy of helping his mother to pack, and as he stood seriously holding various articles preparatory to their entombment, he talked of the summer and heard promises that mother would spend a long long time with Michael.
"Mother," he said suddenly, "what is my father?"
"What makes you ask that?"
"The boys at Miss Marrow's all ask me that. Have I got a father? Must boys have fathers? Oh, mother, do tell me," pleaded Michael.
Mrs. Fane seemed worried by this question.
"Your father was a gentleman," she said at last.
"What is a gentleman?"
"A good man, always thoughtful and considerate to others."
"Was that man in the photograph my father?"
"What photograph?" Mrs. Fane parried.
"By your bed at the seaside?"
"I don't remember," she said, "Anyway, your father's dead."
"Is he? Poor man!" said sympathetic Michael.
"And now run to Nanny and ask her if she remembers where mother put her large muff."
"Nanny," said Michael, when he had received Nurse's information, "why did my father die?"
"Die? Die? What questions. Tut-tut! Whatever next?" And Nurse blew very violently to show how deeply she disapproved of Michael's inquisitiveness.
That evening, just when Michael was going to bed, there came a knock at the door, and a tall fair man was shown into the drawing-room.
"How d'ye do, Mrs. Fane? I've come to ask you if you'll go to the theatre to-night. Saxby is coming on later."
"Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Prescott, but I really think I must stay in. You see," she said smilingly, "it's Michael's last night of me for a long time."
Michael stood gazing at Mr. Prescott, hating him with all his might and sighing relief at his mother's refusal to go out.
"Oh, Michael won't mind; will you, Michael?"
Nurse came in saying 'Bed-time! Tut-tut-tut! Bed-time!' and Michael's heart sank.
"There you are," said Mr. Prescott. "Here's Nurse to say it's bed-time. Now do come, Mrs. Fane."
"Oh, I really think I ought to stay."
"Now what nonsense. Saxby will be furiously disappointed. You must. Come along, Michael, be a brave chap and tell your mother she's got to go out; and here's something to square our account."
He pressed a little gold coin into Michael's unwilling hand.
"Would you mind very much, if I went?" his mother asked.
"No," said Michael tonelessly. The room was swimming round him in sickening waves of disappointment.
"Of course he won't," decided Mr. Prescott boisterously.
While he was being undressed, Nurse asked what he was holding. Michael showed the half-sovereign.
"Spoiling children," muttered Nanny. "That's for your money-box."
Michael did not care what it was for. He was listening for his mother's step. She came in, while he lay round-eyed in his cot, and leaned over to kiss him. He held her to him passionately; then he buried his face in the bedclothes and, while she rustled away from him, sobbed soundlessly for a long while.
In the morning he watched her go away until the warm summer-time and felt abandoned as he walked through the wintry rooms, where lately he and his mother had sat by the fire.