David’s father lived in a grey, rambling house in the close at
Baxminster, a plan of his that, as far as David went, had something to
be said both for and against it. In its favour was the fact that the
house contained a whole top-story of dusky and mysterious attics, roofed
in the dimness by cobwebby beams, and used only for lumber-places and
cisterns. Here it had been delightful in years gone by to find pleasing
terrors in these dark and doubtful corners, amid the gurgles of
water-pipes. Here he and his sister (in those years gone by, or in other
words until a few months ago) had often passed entrancing wet
afternoons, daring each other, particularly at the closing in of dusk,
to explore the farthest recesses even to that last attic of all, which
contained a large coffin-like box and a cistern that unexpectedly gave
sudden and mirthless goblin-chuckles to itself, most harrowing to nerves
already keenly on edge. The rules generally in force were that one of
them had to go and sit alone in that very spooky chamber, with face
turned honestly away from the door, while the other dressed up in any
horrific garb that might suggest itself to a fevered imagination, and,
having stealthily entered, frightened the watcher with this hideous
apparition, accompanying it by any such noise of screaming or groaning
that might appear suitable. With the victim looking steadily away from
the door, these noises might go on, like an artillery attack, until his
nerves were thoroughly shaken, though he had not yet seen what the
apparition was to be. David had once frightened Margery into hysterics
here, having entered the room in silence, swathed in a sheet, and
wriggling snake-wise along the floor. He had coloured his face purple
from Margery’s paint-box, and, having serpentined along till he was in
front of her, suddenly yelled and disclosed the horrors of that
apoplectic countenance. On that occasion the gurgling cistern had been
useful, for he swiftly washed his own face to reassure her. But, by a
variation of the rules, it having been ordained that the frightener
should enter the room first and get himself up to receive the frightened
on entry, Margery had got back her own again, for she had chalked her
face and put her tongue out, and lain down in the coffin-shaped box,
closing the lid as usual. David had looked for her with quaking tremors
behind the cistern, and found her not; he had peered into the darkest of
all corners, where an empty bookcase concealed a dangerous recess, when
suddenly the lid of the coffin-box, which he had not suspected, flew
open, disclosing Margery lying quite still, with white face and
protruding tongue. . . . David had run as far as the nursery-landing
before he could master the panic of his legs.
Clearly, then, there was, or rather had been, advantages in this house,
but to-day as Margery and David sat idly beneath the mulberry-tree in
the garden, from which every now and then a fat sun-ripened fruit
plopped on to the grass, David announced that there was no more savour
in these childish things. Margery was a year older than he, but, being a
girl, and already turned fifteen, and he a boy who had but last week
celebrated his fourteenth birthday (his father had given him a copy of
the “Christian Year,” for which he had very little use) she was
essentially some five years his senior, and knew how David felt.
“Yes, it used to be ripping,” he said discontentedly, in allusion to
those years, “and I used to be awfully excited, but I don’t care now.
You see the point was that we _were_ frightened: that was the ripping
part of it. Besides, you know, if any of the fellows at Adams’s asked me
what sort of games we played at home, it would be sickening to have to
say that we just hid behind boxes in a frowsty attic. ’Tain’t no use any
more! So what are we to do all this afternoon and to-morrow and the next
day? It’s funny that you can’t suggest something else.”
Margery gave a long sigh and ate one of the fallen mulberries. She would
have given anything to be able to suggest something else. In appearance
she was so like David that if brother and sister had dressed in the
other’s clothes, and corrected the discrepancy of hair and broken front
tooth, either might have passed a frontier with the passport of the
other.
“Well, I’ve suggested heaps of things, and you say they are all rot,”
she said. “I’ll play anything you like. We used to have rather fun
playing cricket. Wouldn’t you like to play cricket?”
“Oh, what’s the use?” said David. “I should hit you into the Deanery
garden all afternoon, and always bowl you first ball. I took eight
wickets against——”
Margery had a good deal of David’s spirit, as well as his bodily aspect.
“I know, you told me that,” she said. “Twice.”
David had a certain sense of being ill-used, common to his sex at his
age.
“Oh, all right,” he said with dignity. “But you _used_ to be interested
in my things.”
Margery had probably never heard of women’s rights; she only knew that
her beloved David was rather unfair sometimes. On these occasions she
never by any chance took refuge in pathos.
“Silly gubbins,” she said. “You told me twice, and I was interested even
the second time. David, do buck up! Go and smoke a cigarette, won’t you?
It’s quite disgusting of you to smoke, and some day father will smell it
and there’ll be trouble. But it used to make you feel—feel starched.”
“Given up smoking,” said David morosely. “Ages ago.”
“Hurrah! Did it make you feel extra-special unwell?”
“No, you ass. But it’s scuggish to smoke. Only scugs smoke at
Marchester.”
Margery nodded at him approvingly.
“I always told you you would cease to think it grand when you got with
nice boys,” she said.
“Oh, shut up,” said David.
Margery melted completely under this. She felt that he was only a little
boy, in spite of all the wickets he had taken, and that she was a woman.
Instinctively she took up the glory and burden of her sex.
“Oh, David, what’s the matter?” she said. “I am sorry you feel beastly.
What is it?”
David slid off his chair, and lay down flat on the grass, staring up
into the thick green leaves, chinked with blue sky. Almost immediately a
ripe mulberry dropped on his nose and burst, and though it was immensely
funny, Margery continued quite grave. David said “Damn,” and solemnly
wiped it off. Then she sat down on the grass by him.
“What is the matter, David?” she repeated.
David blew away a fly that wished to settle on his face.
“Oh, it’s so dull,” he said. “I am so bored! And fancy being stuck here
all August, as father’s in residence. You’re a ripper, all right, but
then you’re a girl. I expect you can’t help. I’ll come and play cricket
if you like.”
“I don’t,” said Margery. “Go on.”
“I don’t suppose you would understand,” said the superior sex, “but you
see I’ve got to start again. It’s scuggish to smoke or to keep
stag-beetles, and I shan’t see any of the chaps I was friends with again
(and some of them were jolly decent, in spite of what you say about
smoking) except Bags. It’s . . . it’s like emigrating. Of course, it’s
perfectly ripping going to Marchester, but . . . oh, well, I feel rotten
this afternoon.”
“Oh, is Bags going to Marchester?” asked Margery.
“Yes. I heard from him this morning. He’s going to Adams’s too.”
David’s tone was not that of one who finds a consoling circumstance, and
Margery felt her way.
“But you’re tremendous friends with him, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, I suppose so. He was jolly decent to me last half when a lot
of the fellows were against me. But he doesn’t play games, you know, and
has got a weak heart, and he’s rather an ass in some ways . . . and he
says he has persuaded his governor to let him go to Marchester, just
because of me.”
“Well then, he’s very fond of you,” said Margery.
“I know he is. That makes me feel rather a cad. Of course it’ll be
awfully nice to have Bags there and all that, but . . . oh, I can’t
explain, and you can’t understand.”
But Margery, being a child herself, could completely understand the
unfathomable mind of childhood.
“I shouldn’t worry about that, David,” she said. “Even if Bags can’t
play cricket, perhaps you’ll find he can do something else that’ll make
him all right.”
David regarded the roof of mulberry-leaves severely.
“Well, I suppose I’ve just got the hump,” he said. “I don’t care for the
old things, and I haven’t got any new ones yet. Look at these holidays!
I hate cathedrals, and we’re going to stop here all August. I don’t want
to grub in the attics any more, or to play pirates, and there’s no
cricket except one match against those rotten little choirboys. And
father talks the most awful tosh about cricket. Says he never wore pads
when he was a boy—I dare say they weren’t invented—and, anyhow, he
could never have played for nuts. I can’t argue with him; it isn’t any
use, because he doesn’t know!”
David sat up in a despair of indignation.
“Only the other day,” he said, “at the county match, he asked me where
Jessop was fielding. So of course I said, ‘At cover-point,’ which he
was. And father said, ‘Perhaps.’ It wasn’t ‘perhaps’; it was
cover-point. There wasn’t a ‘perhaps’ in the whole blooming show. Why,
even you know that! That makes it so unfair. If father tells me that
dog-tooth ornament comes in Norman architecture I don’t say ‘Perhaps.’”
The wise Margery continued her course of consolation.
“Oh, but David,” she said. “There are a lot of things you like besides
cricket. There’s that ripping poem you read me the other day, Keats’s
‘Ode to the Nightingale.’ I loved it. Was he head master of Eton?”
David wiped the final remains of the burst mulberry from his face in a
magisterial manner.
“Head master of Eton!” he said. “Why, he was in a sort of doctor’s shop,
where you might have got something for stomach-ache, the Head said. And
all the time he was writing that ode. Isn’t it rummy?”
The boy is father to the man, so also is the girl to the woman. Margery,
with secret glee, saw that David was feeling better, and inclined to be
interested.
“Yes, you did tell me,” she said penitently; “but I forgot. Sorry,
David.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I forget lots of things. I say, it’s an awful
pity you’re a girl, Margery. You would have been such a ripping boy.”
“I dare say I should have got on all right,” said she. “Or perhaps you
might have been a girl.”
“Me a girl?” said David. “But I couldn’t. Think of the things girls have
to do. It’s ridiculous.”
Margery felt she must stand up for her sex.
“I don’t see that the things we have to do are more ridiculous than your
smoking, or keeping those beastly stag-beetles,” said she, for she
shared Bags’s horror of that which crawled.
David got up with extraordinary dignity.
“Those are the things I told you in confidence,” he said.
“Well, and whom have I told?” demanded Margery.
“Besides, they’re all finished,” said David. “You shouldn’t bring them
up against me.”
“I didn’t; I was only arguing.”
“Then let’s stop arguing,” said David. “Lord, it’s only just three.
There’s that beastly cathedral clock striking. I suppose that’s Norman,
too, isn’t it? What are we to do?”
Margery made a little sympathetic grimace at David.
“Oh, David, I do understand,” she said, “and I’m so sorry you’re bored.
I know exactly what’s the matter with you.”
“Wish you’d tell me,” said David.
“You know, too, really. You’ve dropped one lot of things and haven’t got
the next lot yet. Then there’s this. Do you remember that green snake
you used to keep, and how, when it was changing its skin, it used to lie
quite still, not eating or drinking, and seeming awfully depressed? I
expect that sort of thing is happening to you. I shouldn’t a bit wonder
if our minds changed their skins now and then, just like snakes.”
David was interested in this, but it was necessary, in his present
humour, to be rather depreciatory.
“Girls do have such rum notions,” he said. “I can’t think where you get
them from. But what then?”
“Just that. You have been a little boy up till now, although you were no
end of a swell at Helmsworth, and you’re just beginning to see it. You
know you would have been furious with me if I had told you, even only
last holidays, that you were only a little boy. But you don’t mind now
because you know it yourself. You’re changing your skin. What—oh, I
forget that word of yours, the Marchester one.”
“Piffle?” suggested David.
“Yes. What piffle you would have thought the Keats Ode only a few months
ago, and at that time you thought it grand and grown-up to smoke.”
David sat down again, thoroughly interested in his own metamorphosis.
“Yes, that’s rum,” he said.
“No, not really. It’s just growing up.”
“It sounds sort of philosophical,” said he.
Margery picked up two or three fallen mulberries, and put them into her
mouth absently, one after the other.
“I dare say,” she said. “Oh, David, do be quick about changing your
skin, and let me see the new one. And now let’s go and do something. I
vote we go and look at that old bookstall by the Priory Gate. We might
find a Keats among the cheap lots in the tray. You asked me to come and
look for one this morning.”
She held out her hands to her brother, and he pulled her up.
“Right oh!” he said. “I say, Margery, you’re not a bad sort.”
And Margery was extremely content.
The garden where they had been sitting was one of peculiar charm, though
to David it ranked rather high among the disadvantages of the place, for
the lawn was not big enough to play any game into which hitting hard or
kicking hard entered, and, as that was the paramount requirement
demanded of pieces of grass, there was really very little to be said in
favour of this garden. Balls always went into bushes or flower-beds; it
was a very second-rate arena. The house itself, rambling and
grey-stoned, lay between it and the road that circled round the close,
and to north and south the garden on its longer sides was bounded by
brick-walls which centuries of sun and wintry weather had mellowed to an
inimitable softness of hue. Below the southern-facing wall a deep
flower-bed, the grave of many balls, ran the whole length of the grass,
which on the other side came up to the wall, flush as a carpet to a
wainscotting. A few rose-beds sunned themselves below the low stone
terrace that bordered the house, but the most distressing thing, from
David’s standpoint, was that this kindly thick-leaved mulberry-tree,
propped and strutted like a very old man taking the air, stood “bang” in
the centre of the lawn, so that lawn-tennis was out of the question.
Along the far end of the garden was a collection of sculptured stones
(“Roman or something beastly,” was his verdict there) probably unearthed
when the garden was first made. Here a gate in the middle of the third
brick-wall led into the kitchen-garden, which, of course, from the
orthodox athletic view of gardens, was also quite futile.
But to the unorthodox nothing could have been more charming. The
brick-walls were starred with stone-crop and self-sown wallflower, and
over the grey-tiled roof of the house rose the Norman tower of the
cathedral, grave and gracious against the sky. The care of the
flower-beds had lately been given into Margery’s hands, who had adopted
radical measures against the dreadful rows of geraniums, calceolarias,
and lobelias with which the gardener had been accustomed to make gay the
long border, and she had gone back to happier jungle-methods. Sweet-peas
stood in clumps like stooks of flowering corn, pansies and heliotrope
and love-in-mist were lowlier citizens, and behind hollyhocks and
sunflowers kept sentinel. And over all, pervasive and mellow as the
August sunshine, brooded that atmosphere of studious serenity which
belongs to such ancient homes of peace as cathedrals and monastic
places. But, æsthetic as such an atmosphere is, it is not greatly
appreciated by the young, nor indeed is there the smallest reason why it
should be. Everybody and everything (such was David’s view) was old
here, and for some inscrutable reason age was considered an advantage.
An old Bishop lived in an old palace, and the venerableness of both
appeared to the inhabitants of the close to be equally admirable.
Elderly rooks (at least they talked in an elderly and boring way) cawed
in immemorial elms. Roman remains were constantly being dug up, and put
in the museum, or, if not worthy of that fate, carefully grouped, as
here, into the form of an outrageous rockery. And now for seven weeks,
since this year the Archdeacon was in residence in August and September,
the monotony of six deadly week-days was only to be broken by the even
deadlier monotony of Sunday.
Such was the pessimistic outlook over life that David took to-day, and,
since pessimism was of uncommonly infrequent occurrence with him, it was
more than possible that Margery’s reference of it to skin-changing was a
correct one. This “sort of philosophical” explanation on her part had
already done something towards restoring him to more normal levels, and
the inspection of the boxes of books outside the window of the
second-hand shop, with the events that followed, completed the process.
For there, by the most apt dispensation of Providence, they found
(Margery actually found it, and instantly passed it on to David) a
rather battered and dog-eared copy of Keats. This was a triumphant
affair, showing that good could come even out of Baxminster, and they
hurried inside to complete the sixpenny purchase. Coming out again into
the street, they saw outside a straw-hatted figure turning over the
boxes they had just left, and suddenly David’s heart leaped, for he saw
that the colours on it were those of Adams’s house. The moment
after—wonder upon wonder!—he saw who it was.
Maddox turned round as they came out, and frowned for a second,
wondering where he had seen David before. Then he remembered.
“Why—why, you’re Topknot’s pal, aren’t you?” he said.
Then he saw that David was with a girl.
“I beg your pardon,” he added quickly, raising the enviable hat.
David took his courage in his hands: probably it was awful cheek, but
after all it was in the holidays, and they were not at school.
“Oh, this is my sister,” he said. “Margery, this is Mr. Maddox.”
Maddox shook hands, and turned to David again.
“Do tell me your name,” he said, “for the only piece of it I can
remember is ‘David.’ You came down to try for a scholarship and stayed
at Adams’s.”
It seemed wonderful to David that anybody so great should remember
anything.
“Blaize,” he said.
“Of course. And so you and David live here, Miss Blaize, in this ripping
town. I never saw such a jolly place. I could prowl about the close and
the cathedral for weeks.”
“Yes, my pater’s Archdeacon,” said David.
“I wish mine was,” said Maddox. “But I’ve got some right here. I came
down two days ago to stay with my uncle, who’s Bishop. I expect you know
him, don’t you? He’s got one of those gorgeous houses in the close.”
David again made a stupendous call on his courage.
“I say, won’t you come to tea?” he blurted out, “if you like these
houses in the close. We live in one, you know. Margy, do ask him.”
“David and I would like it awfully if you would come,” she said.
Maddox laughed, and he tilted his head back a little as he laughed, and
on the moment that appeared to David the only possible way to laugh.
“Thank you, very much,” he said. “We should all three like it awfully
then, so why shouldn’t we do it? But may I just look through this box? I
love looking through old book-trays. You never know what you mayn’t
find, though personally I never find anything but volumes of antique
sermons printed by request of a few friends. Have you been buying
something?”
“Yes, but only an old Keats,” said David, holding it out to him.
Maddox looked at the title-page, which was intact, and his eyes grew
round.
“My goodness, you lucky beggar!” he said. “And you bought it just this
minute?”
“Yes, why?”
“Only because it’s a book that a book-lover would give a lot for. Second
edition of Keats, that’s all. O Lord, if I hadn’t sat down doing nothing
after lunch, instead of coming here!”
“Oh, I say, please take it then,” said David. “I didn’t know anything
about it. I just thought I would like a Keats. Any other one would be
all the same to me.”
Maddox looked at him gravely a moment, and then began to smile.
“Thanks very much,” he said, “and I will then sell it you, if you like,
for ten pounds.”
Then he laughed again.
“I’m a greedy brute,” he said, “but there are limits. Take it back
quick, or it will grow on to my fingers. You are a lucky chap.”
“Ten pounds?” said David incredulously.
“I should think about that, but I don’t really know I’m not in the habit
of buying second editions of Keats. Let’s look again a minute; I’ll try
to give it you back. Yes, it’s quite complete.”
Suddenly David remembered that the find was not his but Margery’s.
“I bang forgot,” he said. “Margery, you found it. Congrats.”
For a moment his face grew troubled.
“And I offered it you, not remembering,” he said to Maddox. “I really
did mean it. Do take it. Margery, you understand, don’t you?”
Maddox laid his hand on David’s shoulder and looked at him.
“It’s quite ripping of you, David,” he said (and at that moment David
loved his Christian name), “but whether it’s your sister’s or yours, I
couldn’t possibly. But thanks, most awfully.”
“But are you sure?” asked David.
He laughed.
“Why, of course I am. What do you take me for? Oh, I can’t bother about
these beastly books, now I know what’s come out of that tray. Shall we
go, then?”
But on the way the question of the rightful possessor of this treasure
had to be laid before him. Margery’s contention was that David had
suggested going to see if they could find a Keats, and that she had
merely accompanied him, and therefore the book was his. David, on the
other hand, had contended that she had found it, and you couldn’t get
over that. They both referred the decision to Maddox with his seventeen
years’ experience of the world.
“Depends on what you are going to do with it,” he said. “If you mean to
sell it, I really think I should divide the proceeds. If not—well, I
should have a box made for it, with two keys, one for each of you.
Anyhow, I shouldn’t suggest the Solomon-trick, and cut it in half!”
The immenseness of all this momentarily obscured the honour and glory of
taking Maddox home to tea, and the fate of the Keats was warmly debated.
David was rather inclined to sell it, and revel in gold, but Margery
hinted that if they were each possessed of five pounds, it certainly
would not be they who revelled in gold, but the savings-bank. Before the
question was settled they had got back to the close, and David pointed
out his father’s house, a little way ahead of them.
Maddox clicked his teeth with his tongue, in a show of impatience.
“This is rather too much,” he said. “You find a second edition of Keats,
and bring it home to the most beautiful house in Baxminster. I call it
rotten. May I see all over it before tea, and the garden?”
David felt he must apologise for the garden. “Oh, the garden’s an awful
hole,” he said, “though Margery doesn’t think so. There’s no room for
anything, as you’ll see.”
So the Fairy Prince was led in and taken all over the house, and as they
went merits and glories undreamed of dawned on David. What had been
dark, ugly wood turned out to be A1 Jacobean panelling, and a frowsy old
picture of David’s great-grandmother in a mob-cap was pronounced the
most ripping Romney, who in his line appeared to be up to the high
standard already set by Keats. And, most astounding of all, was Maddox’s
verdict on the attics, which David had abandoned as a proper playground
for anybody who was going to Marchester in September. But the Fairy
Prince thought otherwise.
“What awful fun you could have playing horrible games like hide and seek
up here,” he said. “I hope you do. Lord, what’s that groan? Oh, a
cistern, is it? I thought it must be a ghost. How ripping!”
David instantly dismissed his resolution of not playing games here any
more.
“Oh, there’s a worse room yet,” he said. “Do come and look at it.
There’s a box like a coffin in it. Margery and I used to play gorgeous
games up here, dressing up and frightening each other, you know. Wasn’t
it fun, Margery?”
Margery was the soul of loyalty. She would no more have reminded David
that only to-day he had come to the conclusion that these games were
silly than she would have had him led out to instant execution.
“Yes, when it begins to get dark it’s awful up here,” she said. “You
can’t see anything distinctly, and the cistern suddenly groans, and you
can’t tell what’s coming next!”
Maddox, in spite of his seventeen years and Olympian elevation, did not
seem to be unbending. David, in fact, if his utterances this afternoon
were to be taken literally, had to unbend to him.
“I love being frightened,” said Maddox. “You ought to read ghost stories
to each other here, and the one who reads may make any sort of noise he
chooses at any moment. Just when the ghost is going to appear, you know.
Lord, I hope I shall never get beyond that sort of thing!”
He, Margery, and David were standing in a row opposite the coffin-shaped
box. Just then the cistern in the room behind gave one of its best
goblin-groans, and Maddox looked awfully round.
“Oh, what’s that?” he said. “That’s not the cistern. That’s a man
bleeding to death in there, that is. His throat’s cut from ear to ear.”
“No,” said David. “I’m sure it was the cistern.”
“Are you? It may have been the cistern before, but I don’t believe it
was that time. Pity it’s not a little darker. There’s too much light
really just now.”
Already to David the attic bristled again with entrancing possibilities,
under this stimulus. It was queer that any one of Maddox’s age and
attainments should see sport in what a few hours ago had seemed childish
and savourless to himself, but since this was so, it was clear there
must be something in it. But school-boy hero-worship made him see
through his hero’s eyes, and all that Maddox did or said was invested
with authority. True, he had seen him perhaps half a dozen times
altogether, but that was quite sufficient to make this matchless
glamour. In all the world there was no one so instinct with romance and
glory as this boy three years his senior who realised for him all he
wanted to be.
Of course they went downstairs again on the pronouncement that it was
not dark enough.
“I’m afraid you’ll think the garden is rot,” said David. “There’s a
beastly mulberry-tree bang in the middle of the lawn. But it’s not so
bad to have tea in: Margery, can’t we have tea out there?”
So the Fairy Prince was escorted downstairs and out into the garden, to
give his verdict on that despised spot, and looked round with those
quick movements of his eye from side to side without turning his head,
which again seemed now the only possible way of looking at things.
“But what on earth _is_ good enough for you, David?” he said. “You can’t
read Keats except out of a second edition, and you told me the attics
were rather fun once, and you say the garden is rotten! Look at those
brick walls, look at the house, look at the mulberry-tree! Oh, I say,
what are those stones in the corner? Isn’t that a Roman altar?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said David. “Do you care about those things?”
Maddox and he walked down to the collection of old stones which had
appeared to David the dullest of the antique things of Baxminster. Some
of the lettering on one of these was still distinguishable.
“Yes, ‘Optimo Maximo,’” said Maddox. “I expect that gap is ‘Jovi.’ Then,
lower down, do you see, ‘P. Aelius’: that must be the chap who dedicated
it. Funny that it should stand here now for you and me to read, while
the cathedral tower squints at us over the attics where the ghosts
live.”
Maddox had seated himself cross-legged on the grass to examine the
altar, and David leaned over him following the letters as he traced them
with his smooth brown finger. And at once the subject even of Roman
altars leaped into interest. Maddox shaded the lowest line of the
inscription with his hand to catch the shape of the weather-worn
letters.
“Can’t read any more,” he said. “But anyhow one day, long before the
cathedral was built, Publius Aelius set that up, because the gods had
been good to him. What a lot of jolly things there are! And some fellows
go mooning along never looking at anything.”
“I’m afraid you mean me,” suggested David modestly.
Maddox looked up at him over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t,” he said. “And there’s a bit of an arch. Perhaps that
came from the temple where P. Aelius put his altar.”
Maddox asked for (and was given) another look at the Keats before he
left, and proposed to David that he should walk with him as far as the
old palace.
“Best afternoon I’ve spent for ages,” said the Idol, as they parted. “I
wish I wasn’t going away to-morrow, or I should ask to be allowed to
come again. Anyhow, we meet at Adams’s in September.”
A haunting doubt had been present in David’s mind at intervals all that
heavenly afternoon. Now it had to find expression.
“I say, I hope it hasn’t been awful cheek of me to have asked you to
have tea, and all that?” he said.
“I can stand lots of that sort of cheek,” said the other.