His heart always hammered, if ever so slightly, when he made his way, as he now did more and more frequently, to the schoolroom or the nursery. Schoolroom-tea became a pleasure of almost irresistible attractions, and when it was over and the governess was legitimately out of the way, Nixie sometimes had a trick of announcing a Regular Meeting to which Paul was called upon to read out his latest 'Aventure.'
'Hulloa! Having tea, are you?' he exclaimed, looking in at the door one afternoon shortly after the wind episode. This feigned surprise, which deceived nobody, he felt was admirable. It was exactly the way Mrs. Tompkyns did it.
'Come in, Uncle Paul. Do stay. You must stay,' came the chorus, while Mile. Fleury half smiled, half frowned at him across the table. 'Here's just the stodgy kind of cake you like, with jam and honey!'
'Well,' he said hesitatingly, as though he scorned such things, while Mademoiselle poured out a cup, and the children piled up a plate for him. He stayed, as it were, by chance, and a minute later was as earnestly engaged with the cake and tea as if he had come with that special purpose.
'It's all very well done,' was his secret thought. 'It's exactly the way Mrs. Tompkyns manages all her most important affairs.'
'Nous avons rèunion aprés,' Jonah informed the governess presently with a very grave face. The young woman glanced interrogatively at Paul.
'Oui, oui,' he said in his Canadian French, 'c'est vrai. Réunion régulaire.'
'Mais qu'elle idée, donc!'
'Il est le président,' said Toby indignantly, pointing with a jam sandwich.
'Voila vous êtes!' he exclaimed. 'There you are! Je suis le président!' and he helped himself to more cake as though by accident.
For five seconds Mile. Fleury kept her face. Then, in spite of herself, her lips parted and a row of white teeth appeared.
'Meester Reevairs, you spoil them,' she said, 'and I approve it not. Mais, voyons donc! Quelles manierés!' she added as Sambo and Pouf passed from Toby's lap on to the table and began to sniff at the water cress. . . . 'Non, ça c'est trop fort!' She leaned across to smack them back into propriety.
'Abominable,' Paul cried,' abominable tout a fait.'
'Alwaze when you come such things 'appen.'
'Pas mon faute,' he said, helping to catch Pouf.
'They are deeficult enough without that you make them more,' she said.
'Uncle Paul doesn't know his genders,' cried Jonah; 'hooray!'
'Ma faute,' he corrected himself, pronouncing it 'fote.'
Then Toby, struggling with Smoke, whose nose she was trying to force into a saucer of milk which he did not want, upset the saucer all over her dress and the table, splashing one and all. Jonah sprang up and knocked his chair over backwards in the excitement. Mrs. Tompkyns, wakening from her sleep upon the piano stool, leaped on to the notes of the open keyboard with a horrible crash. A pandemonium reigned, all talking, laughing, shouting at once, and the governess scolding. Then Paul trod on a kitten's tail under the table and extraordinary shrieks were heard, whereupon Jonah, stooping to discover their cause, bumped his head and began to cry. Moving forward to comfort him, Paul's sleeve caught in the spout of the teapot and it fell with a clatter among the cups and plates, sending the sugar-tongs spinning into the air, and knocking the milk-jug sideways so that a white sea flooded the whole tray and splashed up with white spots on to Paul's cheeks.
The cumulative effect of these disasters reached a culminating point, and a sudden hush fell upon the room. The children looked a trifle scared. Paul, with milk drops trickling down his nose, blushed and looked solemn. Very guilty and awkward he felt. Mile. Fleury in fluent, rattling French explained her view of the situation, at first, however, without effect. At such moments mere sound and fury are vain; subtle, latent influences of the personality alone can calm a panic, and these the little person did not, of course, possess.
To Paul the whole picture appeared in very vivid detail. With the simplicity of the child and the larger vision of the man he perceived how closely tears and laughter moved before them; and it really pained him to see her confused and rather helpless amid all the debris. She was pretty, slim, and graceful; futile anger did not sit well upon her.
There she stood, little more than a girl herself, staring at him for a moment speechless, the dainty ruffles of her neat grey dress sticking up about her pretty throat, he thought, like the bristles of an enraged kitten. The hair, too, by her ears and neck suddenly seemed to project untidily and increased the effect. The sunlight from the window behind her spread through it, making it cloud-like.
'C'est tout mon—ma fote,' he said, stretching out both hands impulsively, 'tout!' in his villainous Quebec French. 'Scold me first, please.'
There was milk on his left eyebrow, and a crumb of cake in his beard as well. The governess stared at him, her eyes still blazing ominously. Her lips quivered. Then, fortunately, she laughed; no one really could have done otherwise. And that laugh saved the situation. The children, who had been standing motionless as statues awaiting their doom, sprang again into life. In a trice the milk had been moped up, the tongs replaced, and the tea-pot put to bed under its ornamented cosy.
'I forgeeve—this time,' she said. 'But you are vairy troublesome.'
In future, none the less, she forgave always; her hostility, never quite sure of itself, vanished from that moment.
'Blue Summer'ouse,' whispered Jonah in his ear, 'and bring your Wind-Vision to read to us at the Meeting.'
'But not too much Wind-Vision, please, Meester Reevairs,' she said, overhearing the whisper. 'They think of nothing else.'
Paul stared at her. The thought in his mind was that she ought to come too, only he knew the children would not approve.
'Then I must moderate their enthusiasm,' he said gravely at last.
Mlle. Fleury laughed in his face. 'You are worst of ze lot, I know—worst of all. Your Aventures and plays trouble all their lesson-time.'
'It is my education,' he said, as Jonah tugged at his coat from behind to get him out of the room. 'You educate them; they educate me; I improve slowly. Voila!'
'But vairy slowly, n'est-ce pas? And you make up all such expériences like ze Wind-Vision to fill their minds.'
Nixie had told him that all their aventures filtered through to her, and that she kept a special cahier in her own room, where she wrote them all out in her own language. 'Another soul, perhaps, looking about for a safety-valve,' he thought swiftly.
'But, Mademoiselle, why not translate them into French? That's a good idea, and excellent practice for them.'
'Per'aps,' she laughed, 'per'aps we do that. C'est une idee au moins.'
She wanted so much, it was clear, to come into their happy little world of imagination and adventure. He realised suddenly how lonely her life might be in such a household.
'You write them, and I will correct them for you,' he said.
'Come on, do come on, Uncle,' cried the voices urgently from the door. The children were already in the passage. The little governess looked rather wistfully after them, and on a sudden impulse Paul did a thing he had never before done in his life. He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, but so boyishly, and with such simple politeness and sincerity that there was hardly more in the act than if Jonah had done the same to Nixie in an aventure of another sort.
'Au revoir then,' he said laughingly; 'chacun a son devoir, don't they? And now I go to do mine.'
His sentence was somewhat mixed. He just had time to notice the pretty blush of confusion that spread over her face, and to hear her laugh. 'You are weecked children—vairy weecked—and you, Meester Reevairs, the biggest of all,' when Nixie and Jonah had him by the hand and they were off out of the house to their Meeting in the Blue Summer-house.
Thus