"Well, we'll see what she says to-morrow."
"She can't be too down on you——"
"Not the first time——"
Something that can only be described as a pleasant hardening came into Louie's grey eyes. Her laugh dropped a note. She looked at the adoring faces.
"That's just what I mean," she said. "If she is——"
"What?——"
"I'll stay."
And that also her stepfather would have described as "just like Louie."
III
Punctually at ten o'clock on the morrow Louie knocked at the door of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's office or drawing-room—it was both—and entered. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was writing at an escritoire that was not big enough to accommodate her elbows, and so supported her braceleted wrists only. There was something contradictory about her attitude. Its rectitude as she sat at the inconvenient little desk suggested that she expected Louie, her turn, pause and inquiring "Well?" that she did not. Louie's observant eyes had already noticed a curious inconsistency about the Lady-in-Charge. A great number of things seemed to lie on the tip of her tongue, ready, apparently against her own better judgment, to be detached from it by a perfectly-timed fillip of opposition.
And Louie had only to remember the word or two with which she had dashed Chaff's affability to be fairly sure that though cocoa and candles in the box-room at eleven o'clock at night might seem a good enough reason for the present interview, as like as not another lay behind it. She stood just within the door.
"Well, Miss Causton?"
"I think you told me to come here at ten o'clock."
"Ah, yes. Please to wait a moment."
Louie listened to the squeaking of her quill and the faint jingling at her wrists as she continued to write.
When Mrs. Lovenant-Smith turned again it was almost as if she had thought better of something or other—say of an encounter with this long-chinned, grey-eyed girl who stood, not dressed for gardening, but in a long grey morning frock, looking at her from the door.
"I merely wished to impress on you, Miss Causton, that the Rules must be observed," she said. "I believe there is a copy of them on the smaller bureau by your right hand there. Take it and be so good as to study it. That is all I wished to say."
Louie did not believe the last sentence, but no disbelief showed in her eyes. She inclined her head, but watched Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, waiting for more. She thought that if she waited more would come. It did. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, having just dismissed Louie, rescinded the decision by speaking again.
"You are older than the others," she said, "and it ought not to be too much to expect of you that you will set a good example."
Louie, perhaps gratuitously, read a meaning into the words. Perhaps you guess what it was. Many of the older people of her world still remembered her mother's first marriage, and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, though Louie did not like the look of her, was still undeniably of her world. With Louie herself the drawing-master theory of her paternity had long since gone by the board; the girl had not rested until she had discovered that her father was Buck Causton, pugilist and artists' model, none other; and if Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had ever chanced to hear of her as Louise Chaffinger, and identified that person under the name which (whether from pride, spleen, sensitiveness or what not) she had since reassumed, there would probably be something very near the tip of her tongue indeed. And just as Buck had always been a pale fighter, so Louie's own mixed blood, though it might surge at her heart, left her cheeks untinged in moments of stress. She still stood, making no motion to go.
"I don't think I quite follow you," she said slowly. "Why do you say that something 'ought not to be too much to expect'?"
Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stiffened and drew in again.
"It is not necessary to follow me," she said. "You will find all that is necessary in the Rules. You may keep that copy; Rule 6 is the one I wish especially to call your attention to. Would you be so good as to pass me that bell as you go out—the small brass one on the cabinet there?"
She half turned to her writing again.
("Good gracious, what next!" thought Louie.)
The bell was a small Dutch figure in a metal farthingale, and Louie passed it. As she did so she glanced at the hand that took it. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's face was wrinkled like a dried apple, and the hand, though beautifully kept, was wrinkled too, and had, moreover, rather stumpy nails. Louie's own hands were exquisite. The bell passed from hand to hand.
Whether or not it was the glance at the hands, suddenly the word too much dropped from the tip of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's tongue. She put the bell down with a little clap.
"The Rules of the college are not called into question," she said. "So far they have proved quite sufficient for the kind of student the college was founded for. By the way, why are you not dressed for the gardens?"
("'Kind of student'—good—gracious!" Louie cried in astonishment to herself. "Very well, madam——")
She spoke calmly, looking modestly down at her long cashmere skirt, but taking in her lovely hands (which toyed with the copy of the Rules) on the way.
"My dress?" she said. "Oh, I wasn't sure whether I should be staying or not."
Louie knew perfectly well that her leaving would make, at any rate until her cubicle should be filled again, a difference of something like sixty pounds a year, with extras, to Chesson's. That is rather a lot of money to hang upon a mere breach of Rule 6. Perhaps Mrs. Lovenant-Smith betrayed herself in the quickness with which she took her up.
"Do you mean you're thinking of leaving?" she asked.
Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped them demurely again.
"I mean," she replied, "that I didn't know whether you were going to dismiss me or not. You see, you may not want my—kind of student. I'd rather not be in any way considered as an exception," she added.
Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would have known that she had now no intention whatever of leaving. As it was, there probably came into her head the thought that after all Louie was a Scarisbrick and a niece of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of horticultural colleges do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and Lord Moone. All at once her severity relaxed—but she hated Louie thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but the smile had a twitch in it.
"I don't think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss Causton," she said. "All the same, I'm afraid the Rules are necessary."
"I dare say," said Louie.
"And so long as that is understood, that is the chief thing. In regard to candles in particular, in an old place like this there is always the danger of fire. In fact, I'm not at all sure that a fire drill ought not to be instituted. May I add that I quite appreciated the chivalrous way in which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night? Indeed, I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think that is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton."
"Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out.
As she crossed the Restoration hall, "'Kind of student'—good gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me as if I were Burnett Minor! 'Kind of student!'—I wonder it doesn't occur to her that somebody might have told me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener four years ago!—'Kind of student,' indeed!"
Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past the orchards, up the hill, and sat looking down over the coombes to the sea.
Leave Chesson's, now? Oh no, nothing was farther from her thoughts! She would stay, and why? Not because she had been treated as a junior, but because she had been taken, as it were, at her own word. She herself might be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her