"Don't they? By Jove! … What are you looking at me like that for?"
The rippling laugh with which Louie replied dropped a note. "Guess!" she said.
"How can I guess?" he asked, with his innocent and statue-like stare.
For answer, Louie glanced to where Priddy's brown bowler hat was disappearing over the edge of the hill. Roy Lovenant-Smith saw—he really saw——
"What?" he exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that that chap will——?"
She nodded. He stared.
"What, get you into a row for talking to me?"
"He may not."
"No, but really, joking apart?" he said incredulously.
"Perhaps he won't."
"Oh, come, I say! … Look here, shall I go back with you and explain?"
The innocent! "I don't think I would," said Louie, smothering her laughter.
"But—hang it all! I say, I am sorry!"
"Oh?"
"I mean sorry I've got you into a row, of course," he amended.
"Oh, I thought you meant sorry you stopped and talked to me."
"Of course not. That is, if it doesn't get you into a row."
"And if it did——?"
"Well, a chap doesn't like getting people into rows. Look here—that beggar wants talking to!"
Louie dropped her eyes. "I've been in rows before," she said.
Instantly he cheered up. "Oh, I see! You mean it wouldn't be much?"
"Well, your aunt can't exactly skin me." At the recollection of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith she glanced with satisfaction at her hands.
"Oh, I'll make that all right with her," said Roy Lovenant-Smith hopefully.
She looked at him. He was an innocent! "You know what that would mean?" she said.
"What?"
"Well, merely that you wouldn't see me again."
His look too rested on her hands. "Why?" he asked.
She straightened herself. "Oh, never mind about it. I'm going now."
He coloured a little. "But I say—Louie—you don't mind my calling you Louie, do you? I used to, you know.—I should like to see you again."
"Perhaps you'd better not," she said, with great demureness.
"Oh, rot!" he expostulated. "A fellow can't get a girl into a mess and then leave her in the lurch!"
"You'd like to see me just once again, to see whether I'd got into a row or not?"
"That's what I mean."
It wasn't what Louie had meant him to mean, but "Well, once, if you like," she conceded.
"All right. What about here, at this time to-morrow?"
"I'll see if I can get away from my studies."
"Right. And if I see that chap in Mazzicombe, may I say anything to him?"
"Please don't."
"Not about not taking his hat off?"
"Oh, they don't trouble about that sort of thing here."
"Well, they jolly well ought. All right, I won't. Good-bye——"
"Good-bye."
He took his board and followed Priddy; she turned back to the college. She laughed again. At any rate, a lark with a pleasant image was better than a hole-in-corner, Miss Hastings affair with a gardener. She would not "coiffe Sainte Catherine."
She duly got her wigging. She was put "on her honour" by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith not to see the young man again who had betrayed the confidence put in him. This struck her as quite richly arrogant. To be put "on your honour" by somebody before whom you stand mute as a fish, and to have it assumed that you accept the bond, was the largior ether indeed. Louie did not even feel called upon to say that she declined to consider herself bound. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith might take her "off her honour" again. She met Roy scarcely three hours later. The interview he himself had had with his aunt in the meantime affected the situation but little; his centre-board was now patched up, and the withdrawing of the privilege of the carpenter's shed made no difference.
They met again on the afternoon following that, and again on the one after that. Louie found herself hoping that Izzard, whoever he was, would not return from "over there" just yet. Let somebody else attend to the hair-combing of the Saint.
A score of different things contributed to her enjoyment of that affair of atmosphere—her "lark." First, the initiative was hers—for her empty-eyed statue accepted everything with as much candour as if he had been born into a virgin world on the eighth day of its creation. Next, the mere disregarding of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was a pleasure she felt it incumbent upon herself not to forgo. Next, there was the instinctive courage with which she translated her sulks into carelessness and gaiety. Next—but allow what you will for the rest: pique, vanity, her derivation, her upbringing. When, the third time she met Roy by the stile, the half-French girl, Pigou, came upon them, and instantly flew to spread the news among such girls as still remained at Chesson's, Louie's Coventry was the coveted thing she had all along intended it should be.
For she was more than merely popular now; she was romantic, apart, a being to be looked up to with something like awe. Meet a young man! She felt herself to be the channel by which every girl in the place might have access to her own dreams. They gave her longing glances, that mutely implored her to tell them all, all about it; she talked about everything else, but not about that, and hearts and mouths watered. They offered to do things for her—to carry her mattress, to do her Sunday watering, even to clean her bicycle; and Louie let them—but told them nothing. Nay, she even drew Richenda Earle to herself. Richenda actually carried her mattress to the foot of the hill one night and slept out. The two mattresses were placed not six feet apart, and, as the birds settled on the boughs and the stars came out, Richenda set herself wistfully to pump Louie.
Then it appeared why Richenda had seemed changed since her vacation. Speaking in a low voice, she too admitted that there was now—Somebody. Weston, his name was, Louie learned, and he was some sort of a commercial schoolmaster at the same place in Holborn where Richenda herself had studied. So instead of Richenda pumping Louie, Louie pumped Richenda. What was her Mr. Weston like? Well (Richenda said), some might think him an oddity—the Secretary Bird, his nickname was—but he was, oh, a soul so sensitive, so gentle! Was there any prospect of their marrying soon? Richenda sighed; it would be a long time; if she got her post at Chesson's he might apply for a country schoolmastership somewhere near, and then she would get a bicycle; or if he got a "rise" in London she might relinquish her appointment—when she got it. But in any case it could hardly be for years. Louie asked flatly what Weston got, and was told one hundred pounds a year. She looked up in surprise. Her own dress allowance was treble that amount.
"And you'd get a hundred here too?" she asked.
"If I get the place—which means if I get my medal," said Richenda.
Then, Louie thought, that would be two hundred between them—two-thirds of her dress allowance.
"But—but——," she said, "I thought people got paid more than that!"
"I told you you didn't know," said Richenda softly.
"But—but—why, my aunt paid Miss Skrine one hundred and fifty pounds, just to go through her engagements, opening bazaars and charities and so on—just to write down on a slate what she had to do each day!"
"Your aunt's Lady Moone," came from Richenda's couch.
"I know she got one hundred and fifty pounds, and lived with them. One hundred