"She can't possibly have her meals with me," cried Mr. Wycherly, crimson at the very thought. "It would be most unpleasant—for both of us."
"Then as I said it's a general you wants."
"And have you upon your books any staid and respectable young woman—preferably an orphan—" Mr. Wycherly interpolated, remembering Montagu's suggestion, "who could come to us at once?"
"Not, so to speak, to-day, I 'aven't; but they often comes in of a Monday, and I'll let you know. I could send 'er along; it isn't far."
The ledger was shut with a bang as an intimation that the interview was at an end, and Mr. Wycherly fared forth into the street with heated brow and a sense that, in spite of his heroism in braving so dreadful a person, he was not much further on his quest. "Monday, she said," he kept repeating to himself, "and to-day is only Thursday."
When he got back to Holywell, the boys were standing at the front door on the lookout for him. They rushed towards him exclaiming in delighted chorus: "We've got a woman. We thought we'd ask at the King's Arms, and they told us of one."
"What? A servant?" asked Mr. Wycherly with incredulous joy.
"No, no, a day-body. The boots knew about her; she lives down Hell Lane, just about opposite."
"Edmund!" Mr. Wycherly remonstrated. "However did you get hold of that name?"
"Hoots!" replied Edmund. "Everyone calls it that. Her name is Griffin, and she's coming at once. Have you got one?"
"No," said Mr. Wycherly, "not yet. Boys, it's a most bewildering search. Can either of you tell me since when maid-servants have taken to call themselves after officers in the army? The rather alarming person in charge of that office informs me that what we require is a 'general.' Do you suppose that if we should need a younger maid to help her we must ask for a 'sub-lieutenant'?"
"Perhaps they are called generals when they're old," said Montagu thoughtfully; "at that rate we ought to call Mrs. Griffin a field-marshal. She's pretty old, I can tell you, but she's most agreeable."
"Probably," said Mr. Wycherly, "in time to come they will get tired of the army and take to the nomenclature of the Universities. Then we shall have provosts and deans and wardens. But I'm glad that you have been more successful than I have. I've no doubt we can manage with Mrs. Griffin until we get a maid of our own."
"I think it was mean of that body with the mother," said Edmund; "she didn't even say she'd come as soon as she could. But I think the Griffin will be fun, and if she can't do it all we'll get the Mock-Turtle to help her."
"Was it very high-class, that registry?" he continued; "it didn't look at all grand outside."
"I cannot judge of its class, I have never been to such a place before and I earnestly hope I may never be called upon to go there again, for it is a species of inquisition, and they write your answers down in a book. A horrid experience." And Mr. Wycherly shuddered.
By this time they had reached the house and he was sitting, exhausted, in his arm-chair in his own dining-room. The boys had opened the shutters and casement, and in spite of a thick coating of dust everywhere it looked home-like and comfortable.
"Richly built, never pinchingly" is as true of ancient Oxford houses as of her colleges. There seemed some mysterious affinity between the queer old furniture from Remote and that infinitely older room. The horse-hair sofa with the bandy legs and slippery seat that stood athwart the fireless hearth was in no way discordant with the beautiful stone fireplace and shallow mantelshelf.
Mr. Wycherly surveyed the scene with kind, pleased eyes; nor did he realise then that what made it all seem so endearing and familiar was the fact that on the horse-hair sofa there sprawled—"sat" is far too decorous a word—a lively boy of ten, with rumpled, curly, yellow hair and a rosy handsome face from which frank blue eyes looked forth upon a world that, so far, contained little that he did not consider in the light of an adventure.
While balanced on the edge of the table—again "sat" is quite undescriptive—another boy swung his long legs while his hands were plunged deep in his trouser pockets. A tall, thin boy this, with grave dark eyes, long-lashed and gentle, and a scholar's forehead.
Montagu, nearly fourteen, had just reached the age when clothes seem always rather small, sleeves short, likewise trousers: when wrists are red and obtrusive and hair at the crown of the head stands straight on end.
Neither of the boys ever sat still except when reading. Then Montagu, at all events, was lost to the world. They frequently talked loudly and at the same time, and were noisy, gay and restless as is the usual habit of their healthy kind.
Strange companions truly for a scholarly recluse! Yet the boys were absolutely at ease with and fearless of their guardian.
With him they were even more artlessly natural than with schoolfellows of their own age. Their affection for him was literally a part of their characters, and, in Montagu's case, passionately protective. The elder boy had already realised how singularly unfitted Mr. Wycherly was, both by temperament and habit, to grapple with practical difficulties.
"Ah'm awfu' hungry," said Edmund presently, in broadest Doric.
"Edmund," remarked his guardian, "I have noticed on several occasions since you returned from school that you persist in talking exactly like the peasantry at Burnhead. Why?"
"Well, you see, Guardie, for one thing I'm afraid of forgetting it. And then, you know, it amuses the chaps. They admire it very much."
"But you never did it in Scotland," Mr. Wycherly expostulated.
"Oh, didn't I. Not to you and Aunt Esperance, perhaps, but you should have heard me when I got outside——
"I don't like it, Edmund, and I wonder your masters have not found fault with you."
"They think I can't help it, and it makes them laugh—you should hear me say my collect exactly like Sandie Croall——"
"Indeed I wish to hear nothing of the kind," said Mr. Wycherly in dignified reproof. "I can't think why you should copy the lower classes in your mode of speech."
"I'm a Bethune," Edmund replied in an offended voice. "I want people to know I'm a Scot."
"Your name is quite enough to make them sure of that," Mr. Wycherly argued, "and you may take it from me that Scottish gentlemen don't talk in the least like Sandie Croall."
At that particular moment Edmund was busily engaged in doing a handspring on the end of the sofa, so he forebore to reply. The fact was, that like the immortal "Christina McNab" Edmund had, early in his career at school, decided that to be merely "Scotch" was ordinary and uninteresting, but to be "d—d Scotch" was both distinguished and amusing, and he speedily attained to popularity and even a certain eminence among his schoolfellows when he persisted in answering every question with a broadness of vowel and welter of "r's" characteristic of those whom Mr. Wycherly called "the peasantry of Burnhead." Moreover, he used many homely and expressive adjectives that were seized upon by his companions as a new and sonorous form of slang. Altogether Edmund was a social success in the school world. His report was not quite equally enthusiastic, but, as he philosophically remarked to Montagu, "It would be monotonous for Guardie if we both had good reports, and your's makes you out to be a fearful smug."
Whereupon Montagu suitably chastised his younger brother with a slipper, and the subject was held over to the next debate.
Presently there came a meek little tinkle from the side-door bell.
"That'll be the Griffin," cried Edmund joyfully; "I'll open to her."
It was the Griffin, and their troubles began in earnest.
CHAPTER II
THE HOUSE OPPOSITE
"Still on the spire the pigeons flutter;
Still