She did not know why she had said she would do theory that afternoon. She supposed it was because she felt slack and bored. Nor did she do very much theory. She went into the classroom, languidly turned over the pages of an old "Balfour," wondered what it mattered to anybody at Chesson's (except perhaps to Earle) that "movements had been observed in the pollen-grains of Cereus Speciosissimus," or that "changes took place in the stamens by suppression and degenerations of various kinds." Then she glanced at a preparation on the stage of the microscope opposite Richenda Earle's empty chair, and yawned. She looked out into the courtyard. Three or four girls dozed in deck-chairs under the dark yew. There was an empty chair—but no; a clatter of washing up was going on in the kitchen under the box-room; she would go up to her cubicle.
She did so, and, pushing off her slippers, lay down on her bed.
Her window was open as far as it would go, but the yew seemed to shut out even what little air there was. All that entered was the faint acrid smell of consuming rubbish; they were slow-burning somewhere at the back. The sounds of the washing up were fainter now; a pigeon alighted on her sill. She had been an idiot, she told herself, to fag herself that morning listening to Hall's demonstration in the forcing-house. She wished there was a pond about the place, with a boat or a punt. She would have bagged the boat to sleep in. It would be jolly to be rocked to sleep in a boat or a punt.
She closed her eyes. The last thing she saw before she did so was the little black-framed miniature of the fourth Lord Moone, the last but three, in his tied wig and ensign's uniform. Louie had tacked it up by her mirror merely because it had been in her room at Trant as long as she could remember and, if one might judge from the youthful face, he was less of an opinionated fool than the other Moones—much less so than Uncle Augustus. …
She turned over. Then she slept.
Sleep also was deep, too deep, at Rainham Parva. It weighed on the girl like a mulch. At five o'clock Louie could hardly drag herself out of it. She fumbled at her loosened belt and pulled out her watch. Five! The tea-gong must have gone.
Well, perhaps tea would rouse her.
She felt by the side of the bed for her slippers, rose, touched her hair as she passed the glass, and went drowsily downstairs.
As Mrs. Lovenant-Smith and Miss Harriet always took tea in their own or one another's rooms—which, for that matter, the students also were permitted to do if they chose—the meal was a noisier one than either lunch or supper. Louie heard one of Burnett Minor's several voices as she pushed at the door. The child saw Louie's face in the opening and sprang up.
"Here she is—give it to me—I'm going to read it myself——" she cried.
Burnett Minor always wanted to read it herself—"it" usually being one of the sublimer passages from the current number of the "Pansy Library" or an especially choice one from an office-boys' periodical. Louie smiled languidly now as the girl snatched a booklet from Elwell's hand and gave tongue.
"I've punctured your back tyre, Causton, but Mac has some solution and we'll mend it after tea—and I'm always to do my hair like this, Harris says—do look at it, isn't it stunning?—and now—aha!" (somebody had made a grab for her book). "Thought you'd got it, didn't you, Elwell? Now I'll read it first and then show her the picture, and that reminds me, Mac, you've never given me my 'Jack Sheppard' back that I lent you——"
Louie reached for a chair. She yawned again.
"Do give me a cup of tea, somebody. I hope the watering's all done, for I'm not going to do any. What's the child got now? If it's 'Maria Martin' or 'Irene Iddesleigh,' I think I know them by heart."
The child herself answered her question. She jumped on a chair and extended an arm for silence.
"Ready?" she cried. "Now!"
"'THE LIFE AND BATTLES OF BUCK CAUSTON,'"
she declaimed in her most ringing voice,
"'Being the Full Story and Only Authorised Life of this Famous Pugilist'—
("Causton's uncle, don't forget, girls)—
"'Revised by Himself and now Published for the First Time—including his Historic Encounter with the Great Piker Betteridge'—
("Piker Betteridge—'Piker'—isn't it lovely?)
"'Entered at Stationers' Hall and All Rights Reserved "'Price One Penny'"
B. Minor drew out every syllable of the linked sweetness, and concluded;
"And lo and behold—on the cover—Buck himself—Uncle Buck, Causton—you needn't say he isn't—as large as life and twice as beautiful—there!"
She held up the booklet in triumph.
But she drew it back again, bubbling with enjoyment. "Wait till I find the gem—the one about Piker," she cried.
Her fingers fluttered rapidly through the precious pennyworth in search of the "gem."
Louie's cup of tea had been at her lips, but not a drop spilt as she put it down again. If her colour changed at all it was only as that other pale fighter's had done whose story, Price One Penny, the unconscious Burnett Minor was rapturously searching.
"Here it is!" cried B. Minor, peremptorily extending her hand again. "Listen, everybody!—
"'But the redoubtable Buck refused to allow the wiper to be skied. He recked nothing of his bunged optic and the claret that flowed from his beezer. Game as a buck-ant he advanced for the twenty-eighth round. The Piker, whose bellows were touched——'"
But Louie had risen and walked to the child. She held out her hand.
"Let me look," she said.
B. Minor gave her a suspicious look, as if she feared she might be reft of her treasure. "You will give it me back?"
"Oh yes."
Louie took the book.
She supposed she was awake now, but somehow a curious air of unreality enveiled whatever it was that was happening. She looked at the cover of the "Life" in her hand. The most execrable of woodcuts could hardly disguise what she saw. Traditionally posed, nude above the waist, and clad below only in tights and fighting-shoes—formidably watchful, lightly poised for the blow—in appearance at any rate he was a man and superb. But really he had been cruel, faithless, divorced.
As if she had passed merely from one state of half-wakefulness to another, she did not think of the bomb she was about to drop among the girls. She only wanted to look, and to look, and to look again at this man, who was her father.
"Isn't it just Causton's mouth and chin?" she barely heard Burnett Minor bubbling. "But I can't say she has Uncle Buck's beezer——"
Slowly Louie handed the "Life and Battles" back. At any rate she had now seen him, if only in a wretched woodcut. She looked quietly about her.
"That's my father," she said, perhaps a shade distinctly and loudly.
Then she looked about her again.
Burnett Minor jumped down from her chair. Her eyes shone flattery on Louie. The very audacity of such a lie compelled her admiration.
"O-o-oh—what a whopper!" she cried. Louie turned her eyes to Burnett Minor.
"You said uncle. You weren't quite right. That's my father," she said again.
Burnett Minor's life was full of miracles. A miracle more or less made no difference. Her eyes sparkled. She alone of the girls believed.
"Not really?" she gasped.
Louie nodded.
"Qu'est c'qu'elle dit?" Pigou cried excitedly, somewhere at the back.
"Pooh, she didn't—she only nodded—nodding