'Now, stand up and answer, please,' whispered Nixie. 'Daddy made all this up, you know. It's your turn to answer now.'
Paul rose with difficulty. At first it seemed as if the chair meant to rise with him, so tightly did it fit; but in the end he stood erect without it, and bowing to the President, he said in solemn tones—and the words came genuinely from his heart:
'I appreciate the honour done to me. I am very grateful indeed.'
'That's very good, I think,' Nixie whispered under her breath to him.
Then Toby advanced, climbing down laboriously from her perch on the broken bench, and stalked up to the spot just vacated by her brother. She, too, was suitably dressed for the occasion, but owing to her diminutive size, and the fact that she did not reach up to the patch of moonlight, it was not possible to distinguish more than the white cap pinned on to her hair. It looked like a housekeeper's cap. She, too, carried a wand of office. Was it a hunting crop or poker, Paul wondered?
Toby, then, with much more effort than Jonah, repeated the formula of admission. She got the lines a little mixed, however:—
You've applied to our Secret Society,
Which is full of unusual propriety,
And, in spite of your past,
We admit you at last,
But we hope you'll behave with variety.
'I will endeavour to do so,' said Paul, replying with a low bow.
When he rose again to an upright position, Nixie was standing close in front of him. One arm still held up the curtains, but the other pointed directly into his face.
'Your 'ficial position in the Society,' she said in her thin, musical little voice, also repeating words learned by heart, 'will be that of Recording Secretary, and your principal duties to keep a record of all the Aventures and to read them aloud at Regular Meetings. Any Meeting anywhere is a Regular Meeting. You must further promise on your living oath not to reveal the existence of the Society, or any detail of its proceedings, to any person not approved of by the Society as a whole.'
She paused for his reply.
'I promise,' he said.
'He promises,' repeated three voices together. There was a general clatter and movement in
the summer-house. He was forced down again into the rickety chair and the three little officials were clambering upon his knees before he knew where he was. All talked breathlessly at once.
'Now you're in properly—at last!'
'You needn't pretend any more '
'But we knew all along you were really trying hard to get in?'
'I really believe I was,' said he, getting in a chance remark.
They covered him with kisses.
'We never thought you were as important as you pretended,' Jonah said; 'and your being so big made no difference.'
'Or your beard, Uncle Paul,' added Toby.
'And we never think people old till they're married,' Jonah explained, putting the mitre on his uncle's head.
'So now we can have our aventures all together,' exclaimed Nixie, kissing him swiftly, and leaping off his knee. The other two followed her example, and suddenly—he never quite understood how it happened so quickly—the summer-house was empty, and he was alone with the moonlight. A flash of white petticoats and slender black legs on the lawn, and lo, they were gone!
On the gravel path outside sounded a quick step. Paul started with surprise. The very next minute Mile. Fleury, in her town clothes and hat, appeared round the corner.
'Ow then!' she exclaimed sharply, 'the little ones zey are no more 'ere? Mr. Rivairs. . . .!' She shook her finger at him.
Paul tried to look dignified. For the moment, however, he quite forgot the tea-cosy still balanced on his head.
'Mademoiselle Fleury,' he said politely, 'the children have gone to bed.'
'It is 'igh time that they are already in bed, only I hear their voices now this minute,' she went on excitedly. 'They 'ide here, do they not?'
'I assure you, Mademoiselle, they have gone to bed,' Paul said. The woman stared at him with amazement in her eyes. He wondered why. Then, with a crash, something fell from the skies, hitting his nose on the way down, and bounding on to the ground.
'Oh, the mitre!' he cried with a laugh, 'I clean forgot it was there.' He kicked it aside and stared with confusion at his companion. She looked very neat and trim in her smart town frock. He understood now why she stared so, and his cheeks flamed crimson, though it was too dark for them to be seen.
'Meester Reevairs,' she said at length, the desire to laugh and the desire to scold having fought themselves to a standstill, so that her face betrayed no expression at all, you lead zem astray, I think.'
'On the contrary, it is they who lead me,' he said self-consciously. 'In fact, they have just deprived me of my very best armour '
'Armour!' she interrupted, 'Armoire! Ah! They 'ide upstairs in the cupboard,'—and she turned to run.
'Do not be harsh with them,' he cried after her, 'it is all my fault really. I am to blame, not they.'
''Arsh! Oh no!' she called back to him. 'Only, you know, if your seester find them at this hour not in bed '
Paul lost the end of the sentence as she turned the corner of the house. He gathered up the remnants of the ceremony and followed slowly in her footsteps.
'Now, really,' he thought, 'what a simple and charming woman! How her eyes twinkled! And how awfully nice her voice was!' He flung down the rugs and wands and tea-cosy in the hall. 'Out there,' with a jerk in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean, 'the whole camp would make her a Queen.'
Altogether the excitement of the last hour had been considerable. He felt that something must happen to him unless he could calm down a bit.
'I know,' he exclaimed aloud, 'I'll go and have a hot bath. There's just time before dinner. That'll take it out of me.' And he went up the front stairs, singing like a boy.
CHAPTER X
Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.
—BLAKE.
For some days after that Paul walked on air. Incredible as it may seem to normally constituted persons, he was so delighted to have found a medium in which he could in some measure express himself without fear of ridicule, that the entire world was made anew for him. He thought about it a great deal. He even argued in his muddled fashion, but he got no farther that way. The only thing he really understood was the plain fact that he had found a region where his companions were about his own age, with his own tastes, ready to consider things that were real, and to let the trivial and vulgar world go by.
This was the fact that stared him in the face and made him happy. For the first time in his life he could play with others. Hitherto he had played alone.
'It's a safety-valve at last,' he exclaimed, using his favourite word. 'Now I can let myself go a bit.
They will never laugh; on the contrary, they'll understand and love it. Hooray!'
'And, remember,' Nixie had again explained to him, 'you have to write down all the aventures. That's what keeping the records means. And you must read them out to us at the Meetings.'
And he chuckled as he thought about it, for it meant having real Reports to write at last, reports that others would read and appreciate.
The aventures, moreover, began very